We've got a few friends who have been a part of Teen Mania trips in the past, both as students, leaders and Teen Mania staff. One of them even gave me a copy of her Teen Mania Team Leader training manual. It was very in-depth and had some very practical leadership material.
Global Expeditions runs a True North seminar, which is the first step into which an individual 'applies' to be a leader for one of their trips. Covered in this seminar are the following elements:
Large and small Group Leadership
Public Speaking
Cross-cultural Evangelism
Effective Confrontation
Small Group Initiatives
Personal Feedback from Experienced Leaders
Evaluation for Global Expeditions summer leadership positions
It's an interesting list. Personally, I would love to go to one just to sit in on it and see the extent of the material. From the listing of the topics, it sounds like it's not just about going to get a project done, but rather using the trip as a means of discipleship for the students involved.
There are a few things that I like about this list:
- Large Group Leadership - I don't even know what that means, but I can imagine it deals with traveling with large groups, set up for some of their large scale dramas and or projects, maybe dealing with how to manage large groups of people and the leaders serving under you.
- Effective Confrontation - Really good idea. I've had to do some confrontation on over 50% of mission trips that I have been on. Not only mission trips; retreats, summer camp settings, Manhunt games, you know the drill.
- Public Speaking - I guess every leader they have has to be able to speak in front of people.
It would also be interesting to be on the opposite side of the table regarding the last two - Feedback and Evaluation. How exactly do they train the people that provide those two things? That would be some rich stuff.
Almost sounds like a list of things to train church planters huh?
Any other topics that you readers might list on prepping mission team leaders?
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