Volunteers Archives - Page 6 of 6 - Blog | Download Youth Ministry Blog

14 Dec 2016

The key to surviving Christmas craziness: Less, not more

By |2016-12-14T07:25:11-08:00December 14th, 2016|Uncategorized, Volunteers|1 Comment

“You’re in ministry. How do you avoid the insanity of this Christmas season?” my friend recently asked. “I’ve got three kids and between all the church and school programs, we’re always busy!”

There was a time when I added to the Christmas chaos, hosting Christmas parties, special worship nights, and programs for the adult leaders and kids in my youth ministry. But then, in my conversations with parents, I started hearing more and more people echo my friends’ sentiment. At Christmas, people’s to-do lists are at all-time highs. It’s like we pass this season of waiting by filling our calendars. We’re tired and longing for time with our families.

What parents actually want during this time of year is LESS, not more.

After 15 years in ministry, I’ve finally started listening to them.

As a ministry, we no longer host additional Christmas programs. Instead, we limit our festivities to our regularly scheduled youth group times. We replace one of our Wednesday night programs with our Christmas party. In doing so, we avoid adding another thing to families’ already crazy calendars (something that, not-so-coincidentally, also boosts our Christmas party attendance.)

We also don’t have a Christmas program or special worship night. Instead, we encourage teens to bring their families to worship on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and to celebrate these events TOGETHER.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, we actually take a break from programming around the holidays. Because Christmas falls on a Sunday, this year, we’re taking two weeks off of our Sunday program and three weeks off of our Wednesday night program. Doing so gives our adult leaders a break. What’s more, it creates some space for our families, reducing the amount of things they have to juggle this time of year and providing them with opportunities to simply spend time together.

Don’t get me wrong. By reducing our Christmas programs, I know we’re not eliminating the Christmas insanity altogether for people. There are plenty of other things contributing to that.

However, we are sending a countercultural message, one that I hope says, “In the midst of this frantic season, God breaks in and offers rest.”

As the church, we hope to do the same.

28 Nov 2016

GUEST SURVEY: Youth Ministry Staffing & Volunteer Ratios

By Josh Griffin|2016-11-28T19:41:11-08:00November 28th, 2016|Volunteers|0 Comments

Do you have enough staff support for your youth ministry? Do you have enough volunteers to serve students well? Our friend Nick Blevins is doing a survey with a BIG prize we wanted you to know about:

There are exceptions, but I usually feel like we never have enough staff or volunteers in our ministry. I know I’m not alone, because it’s a topic that usually comes up when I talk with other ministry leaders. I enjoy talking with other ministry leaders about this topic so I can get a sense for their experience and compare it with my own. There aren’t a lot of guides and benchmarks out there when it comes to healthy staff and volunteer ratios, but the book Sustainable Youth Ministry is one of them.

To go along with that, I’m hosting a survey where ministry leaders can share their staffing and volunteer ratios. Would you mind sharing yours? When the survey is wrapped up you’ll be able to see the full results and use it as a guide for your ministry. In addition, we’re giving away a number of prizes as a way of saying thank you for your input. One of the prizes is a one-year Gold Membership to DYM!

If you’re up for taking the survey, click here to access it!

28 Nov 2016

Give It Away, Give It All Away

By Justin Knowles|2016-11-27T17:04:49-08:00November 28th, 2016|Leadership, Teaching/Programming, Uncategorized, Volunteers, Youth Pastor Life|3 Comments

I posted a tweet the other day and it just got me thinking even more and more about it. Here it is to give you some context:

“When students post how God is moving in their lives & mention your leaders, not you… rejoice. It’s a good thing, you’re letting them lead.”

It just got me thinking as leaders of a ministry, we sometimes get caught in the trap of thinking in which we need to be the ones in the lime light. We are the ones in which students need to post about. We need to be the ones in all the photos of “favorite people” at SHIFT (enter your own ministry name there). Someone posted a picture the other day with one of our leaders saying, “This person has shown me more about God and has helped me grow more than anyone at SHIFT” and my first reaction was…

“Really? I’m the one who teaches every week.”

Then I immediately felt convicted and realized I am actually doing what I want to be doing. I want to give away everything. I know I cannot effectively minister to everyone that shows up on a Wednesday. I know I need more and more caring adults pouring into the lives of students. When they do that, our ministry becomes more and more attractive because of the relationships formed. When students don’t post about us but about leader, rejoice, it means you are letting them lead.

Here is just a quick list of things I want to give away more and more and maybe you should work on this too:

Time with students. I want to really pour into my small group guys and allow leaders to go and invest in more students. When we do this, it makes our big group feel small.
Give away control of services. This year we have 4 weeks called You Own The Night where students take over the service by our most pulled from high schools and they do everything. They plan it, teach it, organize the event and more. Not only that, we have a few Leaders Own The Night giving the night over to our leaders where they will teach on what they feel god has laid on their hearts.
Campus ministry. I could make a full-time job of campus ministry with how much stuff goes on in schools. I want to give away leadership and ownership to our student leadership team and encourage them to own taking up outreach on their own campuses. They know way more students than I do.
Give away ideas. I know I have good ideas. But not all my ideas are the best ideas. I want to work on in planing to allow the “best idea win” and collaborate more than I ever have with my team, with our leaders and with our students to come up with the best ideas to reach more students.
Give away titles. I learned this from Doug Fields and Josh Griffin. Give away your title. Your leaders are pastors. You might be the paid pastor, but give away your title and allow your leaders to be pastors to the students in which they are in relationship with. Let them do what you do.
Decisions and baptisms. I cannot wait for the day in which no students ask me to baptize them, but they ask the leaders who are involved in their lives to baptize them instead. That is how I know I am being a great leader.

These are just a few off the top of my head but I can tell you I will continue to work on this list of things to give away so I can be a more and more effective leader. What would you add?

@justinknowles3

14 Nov 2016

GUEST POST: The Rewards of The Summer of Crazy

By Josh Griffin|2016-11-14T19:55:46-08:00November 14th, 2016|Volunteers|0 Comments

GUEST POST: Dennis Beckner, Youth Ministry Volunteer 20+ years and DYM Author!

Knowing my small group boys would be graduating this year, I chose to do The Summer of Crazy last year. This summer, I’m reaping the youth ministry rewards of putting in the extra effort. Next school year will be much better because of it.

Here’s the story: For the longest time, I wish I could have known my small group students when they were younger. It would help me know first hand what was in their pasts, which would help me understand their present. Last summer I decided to do something about it.

I double-dipped into both our High School Ministry (my primary area of service) and our Junior High Ministry (a place I swore I’d never serve – which I turned out to love). I did two weeks of high school camp, a week of junior high camp, junior high guy’s trip, and a bunch of other events, etc. That’s why I call it The Summer of Crazy. I even got a nice trophy of a bruise from the Junior High Ice Skating Night. So fun.

It was a struggle to not make my current students feel neglected or like I had moved on. That was especially tough because I’m a social-media junkie; everything I do that’s fun gets posted online. With so much going on, I don’t blame them for feeling that way.

However, I also used that tension with my current students to cast vision. I told them why I was working with my upcoming students. By doing this, I was able to help them see the importance of taking a long view of life, rather than just letting it happen.

Here’s where the benefits came in this year: Out of all of the students I met last summer, a few of them have begun to seek me out to ask if they can be in my camp cabin as Freshmen this summer, and in my small group next year. We’re way ahead of the game from where we would have been.

I’ve even been able to do some counseling with them and some fun activities. If I waited for them to come up to 9th grade before I met them, getting started would have taken much longer and I wouldn’t know as much about them first hand. The Summer of Crazy turned out to be a great success.

Something I’ve learned over time is that I need to have a strategic long view of youth ministry. To do that well, I need to be strategic about how and where I serve. This was the best, and most physically draining, decision I’ve probably ever made in youth ministry.

This, and many other youth ministry strategic ideas, are in my brand new book Volunteer Youth Ministry, A Roadmap For Strategic Leadership. I hope you’ll check it out. It was very fun to write and I know all youth workers (paid and volunteer) will enjoy it.