Caroline Howard - My Leadership Pathway
Caroline Howard serves as the Student Ministry Resident at her home church, Foundation Christian Church in Newnan, GA, a suburb of Atlanta. Roughly 3 years ago, she shared with her youth pastor of her call to student ministry. He then began to intentionally instruct her on some student ministry basics while also tapping her to plan and lead large group games and work the Welcoming Committee for first-time students. She admits that that couldn’t have been a more perfect role for her with her people-person nature!
Thereafter, she and a few other student leaders began serving in an internship to discover if ministry really was for them. Caroline’s draw toward ministry heightened as she realized how energized she was to be involved in students’ lives, even in the smallest of ways. In addition to serving in Student Ministry, she also served in Kids Ministry, leading worship doing silly dances. Eventually, she began teaching in the large group.
If she wasn’t ministry-focused, Caroline would probably pursue a degree in Education to become a teacher, specifically teaching Psychology and counseling students, because helping young people handle stressful situations is something that she believes is too often overlooked. And yet, she believes there’s a component of this that she can help address in ministry.
There have been times where she felt like she wasn’t in the right place, to the point of thinking she wasn’t good enough to be in ministry. She admits that she’s someone who struggles with a great deal of self doubt. In everything she does, she tends to overthink and question herself. It tends to just naturally happen with her. During those moments of her crying out to God, asking Him, “Are you sure you even want me?” He’s never failed to respond with, “What you have is more than enough! Let me show you what I have done through you.”
Something she’s learned more recently in residency is that her struggle with confidence can be directly linked to her lack of Self-Care. She’s noticed this more clearly in mirroring moments with 6th graders talking openly about their low self-esteem. She saw herself listening to their similar narrative.
It was at that moment that I saw how my lack of self-esteem, care, and confidence could not coexist with my natural ability to be influential to those around me.
As she approaches her 2nd year of residency, she hopes to gain more experience that can’t be taught in a classroom but can only be learned hands-on. Early on in her residency, she yearned to get everything right; now she realizes that she can’t be perfect: I am incapable of being perfect, but luckily that is not what is expected of me. Failing is a part of life because if you never fail then how can you learn? That is big for me because one of my biggest fears is failing. That’s mainly because I equate failure to being a disappointment. Now, I care more about being the best version of myself for my students. I want to be a light in their lives, but being sure that I am not pouring out of an empty cup is extremely important.
Caroline’s take on residency is that it’s been incredibly helpful to her. Not only has she learned from those she works with, but she’s also been able to offer a different perspective to the team. The fact that we can all work together as a team and bounce concepts, ideas, and knowledge off each other is so beautiful. I am so blessed to have this opportunity!
I’m Caroline Howard, and this is my leadership pathway.
