It has taken me 8 months to read this book. Isn't that pathetic? I almost said 8 years. That would have been even more pathetic. I finished it right before youth group last night.
8 months ago in February, I was given this book to read because my "youth leader" as I'll call him believed we all need to be leaders or something in the youth group. One problem with that is in order for us to be leaders, we need followers and if we're all leaders, then who will be our followers? Our friends at school perhaps? That could be so. Three of us were given books on leadership or being social and so far I'm the only one that has touched mine and actually finished it. In my opinion that shows how much we actually care about leadership or at least how much we respect our current youth leader. It's like we don't respect him enough to actually get ourselves into the books to better our youth group.
I think this respect issue has something to do with who our leader is. You need to understand that this guy is like a brother to me. And I used to live next door to him. He has grown up with this youth group. We don't respect him in the way he wants to be respected because we grew up with him. In my opinion and I know I have a ton of them, but I think we all treat each other, or try to at least, with equal respect. I don't think that's what a leader needs particularly a youth leader or youth pastor. Our guy wants the respect of an authority figure, but he isn't getting that because we all treat him as one of us. I'm not saying we didn't treat our old youth pastors like that. They were completely new to us plus they were much older by about 6-8 years for me. Our guy is at least 3 years older than me. I'm not a good follower for that I don't think. I'm not at all trying to rip on this guy because for the most part he's a good guy except when he gets annoying, but we've always been told for many years that guys mature at a much slower rate than girls do. And don't think I'm much better because I'm not.
Back to the book, it talks about five essentials for those who will shape the future. They are courage, clarity, competence, coachability, and character. We could also call it the five C's of leadership. My favorite parts I think were courage and the epilogue.
I can't exactly explain why courage is one of my favorite parts, but courage establishes leadership according to the book. I like how the author, Andy Stanley, says that leaders love progress. At the point in which I was reading that part over the summer, I was really struggling with the fact that I didn't see my youth group growing much. It bothered me a whole lot. I wrote a lot of stupid things and almost did some stupid things, but I'm over it now. I remember in particular thinking that brotherly youth leader was gonna regret giving me this book to read because I was going to go up against him. As an old youth pastor, who at one point owned the same copy of this book I just finished, said to me, and I know it's so true now and I don't know why I argued with him about it; but leaders do like progress, but you can't go anywhere without a vision. When he told me this, it made me so mad, but now I'm glad he did because it makes so much sense.
Now you may think I really liked the epilogue because it was the last part of the book. That's not the reason at all. You know once in a while, I would pick up this book and ask myself why I was reading it. I'm not a leader. I couldn't ever be one. National Honor Society doesn't even think I'm qualified because I have no leadership qualities at all. I stuck with reading this book because I can't stand not finishing books. That's one reason. Another reason is, I truly want to be a leader. When I read part of the epilogue yesterday, I realized that I am a leader.
This part I'm talking about is this: "As you embark on your quest to shape the future, remember that in the wake of your leadership is the next crop of next generation leaders. They are easy to spot: They will remind you of you when you were their age. They will be the ones asking all the questions. They will be the influencers. In some cases, they will be the trouble-makers. But most importantly, they are your responsibility."
Why is this so significantly important to me? Because there is a girl in my youth group who reminds me of myself when I was her age. I have to question, did someone see me as a future leader when I was at that age? I was always asking questions and sometimes acting out jokingly. Apparently someone must have seen it. When I see this girl in my youth group do what she does, a light just clicks in my head and I realize that not that long ago, I acted the same way. I remember last year on our mission trip, this girl was asking my aunt all sorts of questions and she kept apologizing, but my aunt loves to answer questions relating to the Bible. I used to be the same way and even today, I'm still asking questions. I like a good challenge and that's probably one reason I'm having trouble in Sunday school right now. I want to ask deep questions, but those questions aren't be satisfied in my class. Sorry I just kinda went off topic there.
Maybe I was meant to be one, a leader that is, after all.
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