Developing student leaders involves equipping them with the necessary skills to share the gospel. Training students in these new skills requires time and effort, but the investment is worthwhile. You may be wondering, “If sharing my faith is already challenging for me, how can I teach someone else to do it?” Great question! Let’s take a look.
Start with Prayer
Make a “Top 5” list
If you want your student to care about evangelism, it is important to help make it more tangible. Help them create a “Top 5” list of people they want to begin praying for and, eventually, share Christ with. Some students will be able to think of more friends than others and that is OK. Have them put their list on their phone or on a card they carry with them.
Pray for their friends with them
Once they have their list, begin praying down the list with them each time you meet. At this point, they should not be feeling any pressure from you to actually talk to any of them about Christ. Right now they are just praying. Help them understand evangelism is a spiritual activity and ultimately God is the One Who draws people to Himself, not us. Prayer is a crucial part of sharing your faith.
Developing student leaders involves equipping them with the necessary skills to share the gospel.
Then M.A.W.L.
Training students in different skills is something you will do a lot as a Cru leader. One method that has worked well over the years is the acronym M.A.W.L. “MODEL it to them, ASSIST them as they practice, WATCH them do it, and LEAVE them to do it on their own.” You can use this process with any skill you need to train your students in, but here is how it might look in training them to share their faith.
Model
Bring your student leader with you when you share your faith with another student. This might be a follow-up meeting with a new student, a random student you meet after school, or you could have the student leader invite one of his friends out to talk to you and learn about your ministry. Have your student leader watch while you demonstrate what it looks like to share your faith with that student. Be sure to talk with the student leader afterward to process the experience and learn what he observed.
Assist
The next step is to train them to share their faith and assist them as they practice. Introduce them to an evangelism tool like the Connecting with God Booklet or other tools that explain the gospel. After they are familiar with the tool, you can role-play as if one of you is a Christian and the other is not. Keep practicing until the student knows the message enough to share it. Note that they may never feel completely comfortable. Sharing your faith is a very intimidating thing to do. Never push them to do something they do not want to do, but encourage them to take difficult steps out of love for their friends.
Watch
When you are ready, it is time to give them a chance to take the lead in a real-life situation. Take them with you to meet with a new student, or have them invite one of the people from their “Top 5” list. Set up an appointment and let them initiate and lead the conversation. Chime in when necessary, but they are responsible for leading. Give them feedback when the meeting is over. Ask them how they think it went and give them lots of positive reinforcement.
For some students, they will be ready to go on their own after just one appointment like this, but more often it is helpful for students to have you watch them and help them a couple of times before they feel prepared to do it on their own.
Leave
Now it is time to leave them to share their faith without you. Our goal is to help students be able to share their faith on their own. Ask them to set up another meeting to do on their own without you present. Get together with them later and find out how it went. Ask them what went well and what they might do differently next time. Challenge them to continue meeting with the others on their list. If anyone wants to continue meeting, be sure to train your leader in how to follow-up their friends well.
Never forget to celebrate this success! They did a hard thing and we want them to continue to step out in faith and do even more hard things. Take them out to ice cream or coffee and encourage them to keep going. This is what growth looks like. This is what discipleship looks like.