I spent 45 minutes talking to Abbie Slate on the phone about her Ignite Group, and I realized that although being turned into a middle school girl would be the worst possible thing I can imagine next to spending eternity driving down Cliffdale around 5:30 pm, it wouldn’t be that bad if I could be a middle school girl in Abbie Slate’s Ignite group. Here are three things I learned from Abbie.
1. People don’t need your lesson plan as much as they need you—the real you. Despite her high level of diligence and planning (for instance, whenever she issues a challenge at a group meeting, she sends reminder emails to both students and parents), Abbie says that the “scientific and methodical” approach is simply not enough if you want to have maximum influence. “Every time that I’ve tried to be really organized and draw from my own wisdom and have it all together to minister to them—those are the times that they don’t really respond. It’s not as practical and real to them.”
So Abbie’s approach is different: “Im not treating them like they’re my little students. They can tell that it’s real. They feel like I’m being real with them; they feel like they can open up because I’m opening up. I’ve learned the lesson plan—making things scientific—just doesn’t really work. It doesn’t have them open up. Be real with them.”
Abbie is mixing a compassionate willingness to be real with people with an aggressive intention to help them grow toward God. Those two factors (as I look around, they seem to rarely come together) make the magic happen.
“When I really just tell them what’s on my mind and what’s on my heart, then they respond because they realize this is real, and they emotionally connect. They feel like I care because I’m investing my true heart.”
2. People don’t need to be taught the rules or principles—they need to be shown how to live the life.
Abbie’s teaching her girls about submission to God. But instead of spending time talking about submission, she shows her girls how to submit based on personal experiences. “I try to keep my mindset: ‘Be real with them, be transparent.’ I won’t just tell them, ‘You need to submit this to God.’ I say, ‘This is going to be really hard, but this is what’s going to happen if you do submit.’ I tell them how I did it, and the rewards that come with it.”
And she’s pushy about this whole submission thing: she leads her girls in identifying new areas that they haven’t yet submitted to God. She explains to them: “You can tell something isn’t submitted if you worry about it a lot—if you feel like you have to control it.”
Wow. Clearly, that is advice birthed from personal experience: packed inside that little statement is a whole collection of late nights and stomach knots and clenched-teeth prayers. Abbie feels it’s actually part of her job to share these experiences.
“It’s not my job to just be perfect and to pour in my wisdom. It’s me walking beside them and doing what I’m telling them to do. One thing that really blesses them is when I tell them something I’m struggling with and how hard it’s going to be for me to submit it to God. They don’t feel alone in it.”
3. People need and want to know and be known in real life (non-ministry) situations. Abbie lives in a freaking different state than the girls in her ignite group, so if she can pull this off, anybody can. What she described to me seems so messy and so counter to the concept of the Glorious and Elevated Leader. Isn’t she supposed to be, you know… the “Leader”? Abbie paints a different picture: “I really feel like their big sister.” Isn’t there supposed to be some emotional distance? Well, Abbie said: “We have sleepovers a lot cuz they love it. I consider them some of my closest friends. I really love spending time with them. I have just as much fun as they do. I constantly tell them, you’re some of my best friends. I love spending time with them.”
The way Abbie leads and mentors her girls reminds me of two Biblical examples of leadership:
1. The shepherd who watches over his flock with genuine love. That’s a lot different than a farmer herding cows. Farmers don’t sit down next to Bessy and stroke her hair in the field. But the shepherd of Psalm 23 lives life with his flock and loves them dearly.
2. Jesus, who gave up heaven to spend time with humans. Abbie having a slumber party with her girls is a picture to me of Jesus condescending to our level by coming to earth. Imagine being there. His feet crunch on the gritty dirt road as he walks with us, his disciples; he makes a joke about tax collectors and punches Matthew in the side. He’s talking to us, the crowd, making us chuckle at our own silly religious ways. He picks up a branch and shoves it next to his face, acting stupid and blind—“Let me help you remove that speck from your eye,” he says to one of us—and we laugh again: we love this guy, who so much seems to love us. He tosses a kid up in the air just high enough to make her gasp, and beams as he catches her. He winks at us and says quietly—it sounds like a delicious slumber party secret—“Listen to me: the kingdom of heaven belongs to girls like her.”
Two thousand years later Abbie is bringing girls closer to Jesus by spending time with them, having slumber parties, and showing them how heart-wrenchingly tough it is for her to follow Christ—and how wonderfully He rewards her submission.
