Knowing Your Worth in Youth Ministry
Maybe it was the first time your pastor didn’t make eye contact with you while praising the rest of the
It’s a fact: we could not do youth ministry or have a thriving group without our volunteers. Volunteer leaders allow us to disciple students well, run activities smoothly, and round out what our ministries can provide the students we shepherd. But how do we love our volunteers well so that they want to come back and serve in our programming for years (moving up with their students)?
Here are 5 tips on caring for your youth ministry volunteers:
Our leaders matter—sometimes even more than our students. Just as we would check in on our students, we need to check in on our leaders. Our leaders are navigating life as well as leading our students spiritually. They want and need to feel supported. Pray for them. Check in on them monthly. Take them to coffee. Go to dinner. Ask them how they are doing personally before inquiring about the progress of their small group. Focus on them first, then the ministry.
I put this tip first because it is, perhaps, the most unintuitive. For some of us, pastoring our adult volunteers feels weird because in some cases they’re older than us, more spiritually mature than us, or perhaps have been doing youth ministry longer than us. But you don’t have to be farther along than a volunteer in every area of life in order to pastor them. You just need to see them, intercede on their behalf, and ensure they know they’re cared for in your ministry as an individual.
Your volunteers are your extenders. They extend everything you can do in ministry. The way a fantastic Barna article puts it is “people are your greatest resource.”Since you trust them with your students, why not give them ownership of other things in your ministry?
Let them influence your students, your ministry, and you. The cool thing that happens is that God provides leaders who are wired and passionate about things in our ministry that we absolutely could not care less about doing. So let go a little bit and give your leaders some ownership of your ministry.
Say thank you. Thank them often. Remind your leaders weekly how special and appreciated they are, and that your ministry could not run or function the way it does without them. Have a thank you event. Have fun. Give them a thank you gift—something they will use (like a gift card, ministry T-shirt, or tumbler). Saying thank you is so easy, yet so meaningful. Your leaders want to be told that they matter and saying thank you is a great way to do that.
The church that I serve at does an entire event to thank our volunteers. This night is two hours of saying thank you to our volunteers. We have fun games, cool prizes, and testimonies of people sharing about the volunteers’ impact. It is always really encouraging to me to look around the room and not only see our student ministry volunteers, but all of the volunteers from our church. This event is a great way to give back to our volunteers and may be the only church event they can attend where nothing is required of them except sitting and having a good time. I always walk away from this event proud of our church for doing this, but I also gain motivation for this event to not to be the only time I thank my volunteers.
Middle and high schoolers are a lot. They are exhausting. Don’t get me wrong! They are fantastic, but exhausting. We want to love our leaders well by giving them a break. We need consistency to create the bond between leaders and students, and that requires our leaders to show up consistently. But give them a break, and do so intentionally. Let them have rest so they can re-energize away from students.
We do this in our youth group by rhythmically taking breaks from our typical programming. Yes, students would love to meet for midweek youth group 52 weeks per year. But we actually only meet for around 40 of the 52 possible weeks, and one of the reasons is to intentionally rest our volunteers.
Even in our Sunday morning youth environment, we rhythmically rest our volunteers. Our student ministry doesn’t meet on major holiday weekends because we want to give our volunteers every opportunity to travel without feeling guilty. We also take the summer off from our typical small groups structure and run Sunday mornings differently so that our volunteers can enjoy a summer break. While we occasionally lose a little bit of momentum with students in the short term, we’ve found that intentionally creating breathing room in our meeting schedule has been invaluable for the longevity of our volunteer team.
The best way to pour into your team is to have “leader trainings” regularly. For some churches, quarterly is a great rhythm. For others, once per semester might make more sense. The point is, get together with some kind of regularity!
Have all your leaders come together to talk about what is working, what needs help, and to speak over them in prayer. Leader trainings are an amazing opportunity for leaders to talk about things, and the organic thing that happens is that leaders start helping other leaders and encouraging one another like, “Hey, I was where you were two years ago. It gets better, I promise. Stick with it.”
At these leader trainings, have fun. Go to an arcade, go bowling, have a pool party, go axe throwing—do something together that is fun and builds a memory together as a group. We play games with our teenagers because it lowers walls to relationship building and trust. We should do the same with our team. When we do that, it allows those conversations around things that matter to feel a bit less tense.
While we’re on the topic, one of the coolest parts about G Shades’ Top G subscription is that we provide monthly drip training videos for your volunteer team as well as an annual guide for planning a volunteer training event!
Volunteers are not just helping hands. They are your partners in ministry. Thinking of them in those terms puts more weight on the need to care for our youth ministry volunteers intentionally. When we pastor, empower, thank, rest, and pour into them, we create a better environment for individuals to thrive and find joy in serving for the long haul.
Maybe it was the first time your pastor didn’t make eye contact with you while praising the rest of the
When only a few students show up to the youth group, it can feel hard to play games. It’s like
For most of us, February is the month of love—and also the month of the “sex talk” in youth group.