We are all starting out a new year and we want our adult volunteers to have a great experience. We want them to be successful and feel like they are making a difference. We also want them to love what they are doing so they will make the ministry a priority and will want to serve a long time. So how do we make this happen for them? The key to motivating a volunteer is placing them in a ministry position based on their passion. For example: if you have a female volunteer that is passionate about hospitality but you have a need for a freshman girl small group leader. So you decided the ministry needs a freshman girl small group leader more than a hospitality leader and you place this volunteer in the girls small group. How long do you think she will stay there? How motivated will she be? Sure she can use some of her hospitality gifts with the girls but how will she feel when she’s preparing the Bible study? This is easy to understand, so how do you find out what are your adult volunteers passions really are? At LeaderTreks we make a handy resource called The Sweet Spot. The Sweet Spot is a series of assessments that will help you and your adult volunteers understand their passions and the right place in youth ministry. Check it out at http://www.simplyyouthministry.com/resources-leadertreks-youth-workers-the-sweet-spot.html

I’ve just written a new e-book called Student Leaders are Church Leaders and I’m giving it away for free.
Student Leaders are Church Leaders provides a simple way to weave student leadership development into the fabric of your ministry. You don’t have to start over, add another program to your already long list, or scratch your current plan. Youth ministry is still about outreach, evangelism, discipleship, missions, and worship; it’s just better when led by students. This book will help you understand the theory of student leadership while giving you practical steps you can take to give your students ownership of the ministry. Whether you have a student leadership program or you want to start one, this book will help your students lead now.

Download a free copy of Student Leaders are Church Leaders at http://leadertreks.org/studentleaders-churchleaders.html

Lots of youth workers dream about having a mentoring program. Students meeting with spiritually mature adults, talking about their personal problems and receiving good advice on how to move forward in their relationship with Christ. Many youth workers think that just putting the adult and the student together WAM!, students will be growing. The problem they think is getting time for the two to meet. Busy schedules and tons of church stuff keeps them from meeting. I do think busyness is an obstacle to mentoring but I don’t think it’s the biggest problem. The real problem is having mature adults who are wiling to mentor. Most youth workers know how to organically sit down and talk with a student about spiritual matters, but most adults don’t. Youth workers miss this fact because they think they can do it, so that means any other adult can too. If you want a good mentoring program you need to spend time preparing and training adults to meet with students. Please note this may not solve the scheduling issue but it will give your adults confidence to speak truth into a student’s life.

For many of us in youth ministry we need adult volunteers to help us. Anyone who is breathing will do. Sure. we want them to love students and have time for them, but to be honest we will take anyone. Lots of us would say this is where we are at: we are in desperate need of help. The problem I see with this thinking is it’s only from our side of things. We need the help and we will take just anyone because students are very important . How does this sound to perspective volunteers? It sounds like the students are everything and the volunteers are second in the youth ministry. What if we were to take a different approach and make the volunteer the center of the ministry? For example, we could invite prospective volunteers to come to our ministries to share their gifts while helping students make life changing decisions. We could focus on the spiritual gifts God has given adults, we could place them by their passions, not our needs, and we could build into them as much as we are asking them to build into students. Youth ministries that use this approach don’t have a problem finding volunteers.