Weekly Meetings with Your Leaders

If a weekly individual meeting with your leaders is the most important thing you do to grow them and benefit your ministry, how do you use that time?

As I have said, from the beginning of my time on campus, I have asked our leaders to give me an hour a week at a set time. Some discipleship gurus have a set program of scripture/lessons they go thru with their students. I do not. I let the student drive the content of our time together.

I tell them we will meet one hour...the first half is personal. I ask lots,of questions:
-Why are you majoring in what you picked?
-Tell me about your family.
-Who are you dating? Tell me about it.
-as a believer have you ever had a crisis of faith or a major rebellion time?
-What's something you want to talk about?
-What do you do for a personal devotional time?
-Any big decisions we need to talk about?

The second half of the hour we talk about their leadership responsibility.
-What do we need to talk about from this past week?
-What did you do and how do you feel about it?
-If it went well, why do you think so?
-If it did not go well, what do we need to learn from it?
-I always remind them that it may have gone poorly, but they did a good job and was not their fault....regardless, what can we learn from it?
-What's next and what needs to be done? What do you need to do? What do you need me to do?

Closing: "How do you want to pray?". I say this every week! "You pray; me pray, both of us; stand on the desk?"

I found many have never prayed out loud with another person or feel they don't really know how to pray and this is a major point of growth and development as the semester goes along. I also ask what we want to pray about.

This hour each week shows you care about them personally. It invests in growing them. It holds them accountable to their leadership responsibility. It helps them succeed because they know what they are supposed to do and how to do it. Plus, they know they will have to come back the next week and face you.