Some may think that youth need to “sink or swim” — that we need to let them fail or they will never learn how to lead.
But that’s not the role of Young Women leaders and the Aaronic Priesthood Quorum leaders.
When you look at the Parent and Leader Guide on youth.ChurchofJesusChrist.org, certain words stand out:
Assist. Prepare. Guide. Minister. Serve. Set an example as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Encourage. Support. Get to know. Pray. Help.
In essence, we are the support team. That’s our role.
What this looks like is actually teaching someone to ride a bike. You don’t just buy a bike without training wheels and give it to one of your kids for Christmas and hope they figure it out.
There is a process of tutoring and teaching, of running alongside, of helping them find balance and also courage to know how to manage that situation. As they get older, it requires less from you until they eventually find success. That’s your role as a leader.
It looks like getting to know your youth so well that as you counsel together and you say, “This is the lesson for this Sunday or the Sunday after,” you don’t just go through a list and assign out whose turn it is next to teach. You say, “Who would be the best person, do you think, to teach this?” Is it one of the advisers? Is it someone from the presidency that should teach? Is there someone from our youth group that should add something here? Maybe they want to invite someone from the ward family in to help teach that.
Then you may say to them, “These are the youth we need to gather in. Who do you think should be teaching this lesson?”
President Russell M. Nelson has said that the youth are “unusually gifted in reaching out to others and sharing what they believe in a convincing fashion.” With activities, we are not asking the youth to lead out because we don’t think they have anything to do — we are asking because they are “unusually gifted” in gathering.
To the youth, we know you are busy. We know you’re going to school. We know about homework. We know you have jobs. We know some of you are involved in sports and other hobbies and things that you are doing.
We are not asking for your help because we don’t think you have anything to do — we need you to help us because you are unusually gifted in gathering and you know what activities we should plan and what will bring your friends out. You know what will bring them here.
You may come up with a great activity idea — but perhaps you have soccer on Wednesday that ends at 7 p.m., right before the activity is supposed to start. So, while counseling together, the leader can ask that young woman what she needs to set up the activity. Then the leader can say to her, “When you get done with soccer, you just come running in this room, we will have everything set up ready for you.”
On finals week, the leaders might say, “You know what? At 8 o’clock, go home and study. We are really good at cleaning up. We are the support team, and we can do that.”
Our job is to help the youth find success, and it is to know them so well that we know their capacity and we know what might be too much for them right now.
Most of all, we want them to come, to bring their friends and to own these activity ideas and the things that we are doing so that they will want to be with us and find belonging here.
As we balance those roles between letting the youth lead and being the support team, they will be, at the age of 18, independent learners, independent teachers and independent planners.
But we want that to take place over time, at their capacity and at their level.
To the youth we say this: We trust you. We know your capacity. We know your creativity and your abilities. We know how good you are at inclusion and at welcoming in.
We need you and those of you who have been called into presidencies. You have been set apart to help with the leadership of this program, and that’s important. And you should be working hand in hand with adult leaders who have also been called and set apart to lead this program.
As we work in tandem, that’s where real growth happens. We all remember the one leader who mentored us through those years. Adult leaders, you have the opportunity to do that. Youth, you have the opportunity to become that.
