What are the signs that a teenager has been discipled? I suppose there are a lot of things that should be different about a teenager who is growing in his or her faith. However, when teenagers are discipled to the point that they can disciple others, they are on the right track.

The research for my dissertation identified seven youth ministry essentials agreed upon by youth leaders from 27 countries on six continents.

Essential 6: Disciple youth to the point that they can disciple others.

While youth ministers all over the world seem to value guiding youth to disciple others, I suspect they struggle as much with how to make this happen as youth leaders in America do. Small churches may actually have an advantage over large churches in accomplishing this. Small youth groups are usually tight, like a family of older and younger siblings. Yes, they may fight like siblings, but they also know each other well and usually care deeply about each other.

A few years ago, I was serving as volunteer youth minister to a small church with four high schoolers and six or seven middle schoolers. Everyone was in one Bible study class. As you would expect, the high schoolers were irritated by the noise of the middle schoolers. I decided to plan a retreat for the high schoolers. We didn’t have the money to do anything else, so we had the retreat at my house. Three of the four students agreed to come.

I really wanted the high schoolers to get about three ideas, so that’s what we spent our time on in the retreat. First, I led them to understand that they were leaders. Whether they chose to lead in a positive way or a negative way, younger students would follow them. Second, I helped them to understand that they needed to being investing in their own spiritual lives if they were going to offer any help or support to the younger students. Finally, I told them they needed to be ministering to younger youth as they were receiving ministry. We divided the middle schoolers up into groups and the three high schoolers each took responsibility for loving and encouraging some of the younger students.

Leading youth to be disciples is good, but leading youth to be disciplers is really the point.