Volunteers: The Unsung Heroes of Every Ministry
Although December is known for Christmas/Advent, it’s also the time when many youth ministries are finalizing plans for their summer missions trip. This month-long series will help youth workers think intentionally about how they practice missions, service projects, develop volunteers, and raise up student leadership.
Investing in your volunteer youth leaders is one of the best ways to set your ministry up for growth. They are the unsung heroes in youth ministry. Every youth pastor knows we cannot build a God-glorifying ministry alone. Yet, recruiting and investing in leaders remains a significant challenge for many youth pastors.
Teenagers long for relational connections, a place to ask questions, find hope, and experience rest in Christ. As youth ministers, we should be aware of this desire and invest in youth leaders who are willing to do what it takes to provide a place for these longings to be fostered. However, this is a big ask, but it is where our investment and training of our youth leaders should lead. We prayerfully work to create lifelong disciples whose faith takes root in their teenage years. To accomplish this goal, we can use three strategies when training our youth leaders.
Recruit and Train by Discussing the Goals of Your Student Ministry
You may be blessed with a team of youth leaders who have served faithfully through multiple changes in leadership. These youth leaders are a massive benefit to your ministry. You may have a similar experience to me: several youth leaders carried the ministry but slowly were burnt out and desired a change. I was left with one leader and had to rebuild a team, almost from scratch.
Recruiting was the first challenge I faced, and you may be facing that too. A great place to start is by sharing the heart of your student ministry. What do you hope to accomplish, and how the potential leader can help fulfill that vision? People will invest when they buy in. Therefore, you must share the goals of your student ministry and let them know how they can contribute. Recruiting is more than just asking for bodies to meet a quota, it invites church members to participate in what God is doing (and will do in the future) through your student ministry.
Training your youth leaders also begins by putting goals in front of them that are clear and achievable. These goals should be broad enough that we may not be accomplished in one year but detailed enough to see progress as we work towards them. For more help with this, see YPT’s article, Setting Goals in Youth Ministry.
Working alongside your team is part of your investment in them. They are the ones who are doing the work as volunteers and for little recognition. Giving them attainable goals to achieve and joyfully celebrating your volunteers’ sacrifice when they are achieved is very important. Finally, it is important to remember you, as the youth pastor, are setting an example. No one expects you to be incredible at everything, but if you are consistently asking volunteers to do something that you will not do then it will eventually lead to trust and credibility problems. This will also help with your recruitment, because you’ll build a reputation as a good leader who builds healthy teams.
Intentionally Disciple Your Youth Leaders
Establishing rhythms of intentional discipleship for your youth leaders is an act of pastoral care for them. One way to accomplish this are through one-on-one investment just as you would any student or parent. Take them to lunch or coffee and then spend time in the Word and in prayer with them. Another way to accomplish this is to invite your youth leaders to do ministry with you outside the walls of the church. Just as the disciples walked with Jesus in every area of his ministry, bring your leaders with you. Invite them to attend a student's sporting event or concert or a meal. Regardless of where it happens, be intentional about the time you spend discipling your youth leaders.
Within my ministry, we have four service teams where youth leaders have offered their gifts and times to serve. These teams are event planning, hospitality, weekly rhythms, and teaching. The tasks that I do on a weekly and monthly basis are divided up and included as a part of our leaders’ investment in the ministry. We’ll spend time praying, planning, and dreaming within these teams. Building upon our established goals, we develop a discipleship strategy that reaches students with the Gospel and roots students in Jesus.
The purpose of these teams is to be intentional about the time I spend with our leaders and specific in helping them develop their gifts. Every youth pastor/leader can do the same, no matter how big or small your youth leadership team.
Meet Regularly to Celebrate and Train
One of the most important ways to disciple your leaders and build a healthy team is to prioritize meeting regularly as a team. The time in these meetings should balance between celebration and training. There is so much that God is doing in our ministries that we often miss because we are focused on the next thing. When you meet with your leaders, prioritize celebrating the fruit God is producing through your leaders. Sure, there will be some problems to address and programs to plan together, but spending time celebrating together helps your leaders remember why they make the sacrifices they make in order to serve in the youth ministry. Encourage your youth leaders to celebrate each other (not just generically, but with specific encouragements) and to share stories about how they’ve seen students grow. Establishing a ministry where the joy of the Lord is our strength will build a place where leaders want to serve for the long haul.
Youth leaders are the unsung heroes of our ministries. They give their time, effort, and energy with little recognition. As youth pastors, let’s make sure our volunteers know how much we appreciate them as we set them up for joyful and fruitful ministry.
(if you’re looking for a good resource for your volunteers, check out Lead Them to Jesus: A Handbook for Youth Workers by YPT’s founder. Each chapter is the length of a blog post so it’s easy to read and discuss during your team meetings.)