The Best Leaders Were Broken

Now that I'm back home, I've been lucky enough to think over my summer and process some of the little things that I learned during my time in DC. One distinct trait I observed this summer was that all of my favorite groups had very broken leaders. Let me explain :)

Over the course of the summer, I had a smorgasbord of youth groups with an innumerable amount of different pasts. I had leaders from all over America...Kansas, Indiana, Texas, Long Island, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Virginia and Maryland. I might be forgetting a few. Needless to say, they came from everywhere. Each group was different. Some were homeschooled, some went to public school, some attended private schools. Some came from rural areas, some from urban areas, most came from the suburbs. Some had seen the ocean, some hadn't. Some had been to the nations capital, some hadn't. You get the picture.

It was a common recurrence for my groups to have leaders open up about coming from very difficult pasts. One leader was sexually assaulted, as an adult. One leader had a homeless father who he had only maintained scattered communication with up until his father passed away. One leader group up in the slums of inner city Atlanta. One leader came to America from Argentina and spoke perfect English because he had been so regularly beaten up in grade school for being 'too spanish.' The list goes on.

The more time that I got to spend with these specific leaders, the more I was drawn to them. Because of my job, I was only allowed the privilege of entering these leaders lives for a week at a time. The more time that I spent with each leader the more in awe of each individual I was. I saw each leader serve as a strong leader to their youth groups. None of them let the brokenness of their past define them. They instead let the victory of Christ proving himself in the midst of difficult circumstances define them. It was interesting to me that as each adult told me their stories, they spoke openly of their brokenness but they emphasized how God used that brokenness to shape them as the most important part of their story.

What did I learn? It's beautiful in its simplicity: no matter what I go through, I will take my brokenness and allow Jesus to be glorified in it, so that when others meet me they can see my story as a testament to the glory of God, just as these leaders did to me.