Who has the most influence in your class?

It may not be you. It might be one of your kids.

In John Maxwell’s book The 5 Levels of Leadership he states that the lowest level of leadership is people following you because they have to.

The second level of leadership is people following you because they want to.

The person in authority is not always the strongest leader. It’s very possible that the loudest kid in your class, “Joey” is functioning at a higher level of leadership. In other words, your kids could be following you because they have to, and following “Joey” because they want to.

When I turned 50, I had to ask myself, “What does a 50-year-old children’s pastor look like?” I figured out I don’t have to be cool, I just have to have cool people around me. I leverage their coolness.

This is why I get kids and teens involved in my ministry, because they have more influence than I do.

If you want to move a group of people from point A to point B you need to get the peer leaders on your side. The first thing you need to do is to identify your leaders and then send everything through the leadership filter.

Who are your leaders? They are the oldest kids in the room. For me it was the 4th and 5th graders.

When we launched small groups for kids at my church I noticed that it seemed to have a negative impact on our worship. Our kids were not entering into worship and I couldn’t figure out why. This went on for months and then it dawned on me what was going on.

We had a small groups organized by grade, so we had first graders on the front row, second graders on the second row and so on. In other words I had my leaders (5th graders) on the back row. When it was time to worship our first graders would run up to the front of the room and then our fifth graders didn’t want to go up there.

I changed it. Now I have my fifth graders sitting on the front row and it totally changed our worship. If you target younger kids you will lose the leaders. If you target your leaders you reach the whole group.

Let me ask the question one more time. Who are the leaders in you class?