NEW YORK -- The Council of Churches of the City of New York (CCCNY) concluded a year of character-building in the hearts and minds of young Christians at the annual youth leadership conference.

The Mission 2005 Servant Leadership conference, held at N.J. Christian Academy in Cream Ridge, N.J., from Dec. 29-Dec. 31, focused on servant leadership, a biblically-based construct to lead by first serving.

“The servant leader is servant first," preached Jeanette Yoo during a keynote speech. "Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant, to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served.

The Mission Program, now in its seventh year, was created to help youths learn about biblical leadership through an on-going mentoring program.

"Many of the other leadership programs just talk about being a leader in a classroom yet lack to provide real life experience where students actually experience and practice leadership," said Rev. Jimmy Lim, Program Director & Editor-in-Chief of The Council of Churches of the City of New York. "The key of our program is mentoring our students and allowing them to lead."

"We engage the student leaders fully so that they know and practice leadership while they are students," said Lim in an emailed statement to The Christian Post.

Interest in mentoring is at an all-time high. According to research studies, mentored youth are likely to have fewer absences from school, better attitudes towards school, fewer incidents of hitting others, less drug and alcohol use, more positive attitudes towards their elders and toward helping in general, and improved relationships with their parents.

"It is not an event but a process that requires all the participants to walk through the year before they come together for the joint conference at the end of the year," said Lim.

Student leaders, teachers, and pastors attend a minimum of 15 preparatory meetings before the year-end conference to pray, train, and minister together.

The prayer, ministries, training, efforts and work that go into the program prior to the joint conference event weighs far much more than the actual work during the conference.

At the conference, speaker Matthew Na, said leading as a Christian is difficult but rewarding.

Na said, the life of a Christian is like a downward escalator. If we don’t do anything, we will go down. If we just walk slowly, we aren’t going to get anywhere, but if we run hard, we will get to the top.