Once you become a youth worker, it won’t take long for you to discover: You. Need. Help! One key ingredient in a healthy youth ministry is a team of caring adults. For the longest time, we tried to recruit young, funny, musical, athletic, attractive, cool, wealthy adults with big swimming pools and lots of free time on their hands.…
Imagine this scenario: You’re taking your family on a trip to Disney World. None of you have ever done a big park before, so you decide to spend the money to hire a professional guide, someone who is experienced at how theme parks work.…
Multiply Your Impact With Volunteers Youth workers aren’t very good at math. Let’s do a little simple math from my “Skinny” book about recruiting volunteers. If you look at the time you spend each week with teenagers, you could go out there and spend 20 hours a week with students by yourself.…
The 3 “P’s” For Your Volunteer Team It’s football season! It’s on everyone’s mind and so it’s an analogy I like to use when it comes to working with our support team in ministry. Imagine your team has shown up for their first game. …
When it comes to youth ministry, different people volunteer for different reasons. Some volunteer because they want to help you out, and it has nothing to with a specific calling or sweet spot. Others volunteer because they have a heart specifically for teenagers and a calling to youth ministry.…
Summer is on the home stretch with the finish line in sight, so now is a good time to begin thinking about your volunteers as you head into a fresh fall season. I think many youth workers make a fairly basic mistake this time each year: In the push to recruit brand new volunteers, they assume the ones they already have will simply “re-up” for another season.…
Youth ministries are supposed to be communities where teens discover and embrace the love of Jesus, discover his purpose for their lives, and experience being part of the family of God. When toxic volunteers, parents, or congregation members enter this equation, we move away from the positive outcomes we strive to provide for teens.…
A story about one woman’s attempt to serve at her church’s VBS: I’ve been attending a small church. I’m not sure they have picked up on the fact that I’ve been coming, though. I think they don’t get a lot of new members, so maybe they don’t recognize it when it happens. …
Summer camp is one of my favorite events of the year. I’ve watched God do some amazing things at camp in the lives of students, and even in the lives of leaders. I’ve watched cabin leaders become small group leaders, weekend leaders and even one on one mentors to students.…
Meeting people for the first time is stressful for many, especially when it comes to students. I wanted to give you tips for helping your youth ministry volunteers meet students, because often times, they are meeting students that may not want to meet them.…
