Stop Waiting for More Staff
In the last three years our staff team has shrunk from 10 to 4 (hmmm. . . what does that say about my leadership?). Yet in the same amount of time our movement size has more than doubled. And student ownership, by necessity, has gone through the roof.
Don’t get me wrong, staff are indispensible for our mission. But if you’re anything like me, when things aren’t going well you default to the dream, “If I only had more staff . . .”
I think it’s a given that we all want increased student ownership. I want to share what I think is THE best idea I’ve ever seen in empowering students to lead:
Student Staff
While not a new idea, it was new to us last year (via University of Oklahoma Cru). The past two years we have had zero staff women and Student Staff was a stopgap for us while we held out for the Region to bless us with staff women. But in the process Student Staff has become our team’s favorite ministry strategy we’ve ever implemented.
What we require of Student Staff is that they to come to staff meeting from 9-noon on Thursdays and that they lead in a significant way beyond the normal student leader who leads a study and disciples.
I was a bit skeptical- how will students merely coming to staff meeting translate into impactful student leadership? But something happens when you have your key student leaders in your staff meeting. They see the vision and the heart behind what we are doing and there is 100% buy in. And that buy-in begins to permeate beyond the student staff as their passion for the Mission spreads among other student leaders. For us, it has redefined what Student Ownership looks like - Student Staff are leading in exactly the same capacity as staff.
The payoff has been huge for us. We’ve completely turned over our weekly meeting to one of the student staff. Last year our 2 student staff girls had over 50 girls in the 3 Bible studies they led.
And maybe the best long-term benefit: Student Staff enables your best student leaders to test drive full-time ministry. 3 of this year’s Student Staff have decided to intern with us next year.
Our goal is to have the next generation of Student Staff picked by April 1 (so they can plan with the staff team for the fall). So as a team we spend these early spring months discussing potential students and meeting with those we want to ask to be Student Staff for the fall.
A few more details on what it looks like for us:
- We have 6 student staff: 4 girls and 2 guys (the imbalance due to the fact that we don’t have any staff women)
- 5 of the 6 are seniors
- We don’t pay the students (though I know other campuses have their student staff raise support)
- We do pay for their Fall Retreat and Winter Conference
I’d love to hear other team’s experiences with Student Staff or other ways of increasing students ownership. What have been your team’s biggest wins in increasing student ownership?
Pictured below is the agreement that we give to Student Staff.
Blog Comments
Great idea - I’ve seen firsthand how this can boost a ministry with fewer staff. Not only do students take ownership because they are part of the staff meetings, but staff are better able to understand the campus culture and how students might respond to various decisions that are made. Also, students seem to respond well when student staff address them in various contexts - something about a challenge from a peer example is motivating.
Aside from attending staff meetings, I’m betting a lot of movements probably have students that are already this involved. I think raising the bar a bit, even for these super-involved student leaders, would be beneficial in a variety of ways, one of which might be increased communication between staff and students.
Tim,
Good stuff. I always had a group of student leaders who were like the “elder board” of the movement. We called it the “Shepherd Team.” Basically they were junior staff. They deeply cared about the movement and often saw problems arising faster than the staff team. My agendas for the meetings with them were simply to ask them what they were concerned about in our movement. Once they threw a few out, we got to work trying to solve them. It was a thing of beauty.
Great stuff, Tim! I am a huge fan of student-staff and doing whatever it takes to make it work—especially adjusting so they can be a part of staff meetings! Since the laborers ARE few, it’s not like we have “extra” staff just sitting around with no where to go - we NEED students to own their movements! Where I see healthy student leadership, I see the most effective movements really doing the deed! Being too staff-dependent does not usually equal growing movements! Also a great help to attach the challenge sheet! And where we’ve seen student staff work well—we’ve seen them have a better picture of staff life and more likely to join with us!
AWise - great addition - that really is a huge benefit: “staff are better able to understand. . . how students might respond”. Student Staff being in our Staff Meeting makes our solutions we come up with a TON better.
Amy - I agree. Previously, we had a small number of students with that level of involvement (and most ministries do). But it seemed like we were always capped at 2-3 seniors who REALLY led. But Student Staff has helped us break beyond that lid to have 6-10 seniors who REALLY own the mission.
Thanks Bob. I like that agenda. We have a Servant Team that sounds similar to your Shepherd Team. It’s a group of 20 Jrs/Srs that meet weekly. I really like the idea of asking them consistently “what are you concerned about in the movement”. Because it engages them in truly leading and we always have trouble really getting that Servant TEam to really lead (and not just manage).
Thanks Millie - Great thoughts. We’re definitely finding that to be true - Student Staff leading to students wanting to join staff/Intern. Hopefully it will continue.
Thanks for sharing the learning and resources from the experiment. It will be a helpful idea for me to share with some others who I often hear, “we need more staff” from.
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