Finding youth staff is a vital part of growing your youth ministry because to cut to the chase: You Can’t Do It Alone!
Building a volunteer staff can reduce stress levels and make the youth ministry even more attractive and more effective when you do it right. Many youth pastors and leaders find themselves doing too much for example:
- setting up the room
- audio/visuals
- driving a van/bus to get students
- preparing food/snacks
- game prep
- atmosphere (lighting, music, decoration)
- worship
And to make matters worse – some churches are set up to where – you can only get that set up on the day or maybe the night before your youth ministry takes place because of space or multiple use of a room where you have to set up and tear down. It’s no wonder how you can feel burn’t out and exhausted even before the students show up.
YOU NEED HELP!
Finding Youth Staff
Here are some things to look for when trying to build a youth staff:
- Adults with youth skills – these are the adults in your church that are natural kid magnets. Maybe you notice that some of the teens always seem to be hanging around a certain adult father or mother. Sometimes we overlook this – but parents who have teens already have a pretty good advantage – however, not are all fit for your youth ministry.
- Vertical growing relationship with God – Does this adult exibit a personal growing relationship with God? What do you know about their walk? You want an adult who is growing in their spiritual walk to be an effective staff person.
- Committed to the church in general – Does this adult go to church regularly? Do you see this adult as a person willing to serve and have they been serving? Look for an adult that has been going to the church for a minimum of 2-3 years so that you know they are not just a temporary person in the church.
- Emotional Stability – Last thing you need to have is to bring on an adult that hasn’t settled their issues from middle school/high school. Funny example: Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite – “If I could just go back”. We all have memories of how tough some things were – I know I have some stories of stuff that happened to me – but if an adult is still worried or has been so impacted by that event/s that they never recovered – then that is probably not someone that you want to have join up. How do they respond to stress? Are they just too emotional or have no emotion?
- Discerning – Basically you need an adult that has a good grip on understanding what is right and wrong according to the Bible as the guideline. A person with this quality can give you some really good feedback as to what students are facing, students that may be on the brink of really getting in trouble or hurting themselves or someone else. This adult can also see which students are potential leaders in your youth ministry.
- Teach-ability - Are they able to come under your leadership style? Are they willing to say yes to the things that you ask them. There is nothing more difficult then having an adult staff person come on board and have them drag their feet on everything that you are asking of them. If possible – try to keep those adults out of your youth ministry.
Once you believe that you have found some potential adults in your church – then take the next step and approach them personally and ask them to pray about coming on board with the youth. Let them know that you would like to have a meeting with them and discuss the possibilities and then if they are still interested – have them fill out a volunteer application.
DOWNLOAD THIS YOUTH STAFF INFO AND APPLICATION PACKET SAMPLE - this work was originally done by Tim Schmoyer (gotta give credit where credit is do) – I did tweak it to my youth ministry and then took out some personal info on there and replaced with sample info. There is a LOT of info – it’s in word format so you will need to go through and tweak, adjust, change, and hack it to make sure that it fits your youth ministry.
Welcome Youth Worker, Youth Pastor, Youth Director, Youth Minister, Youth Guy, or whatever other creative name your church has come up with....
