Moving Volunteers to Ministry Leaders

By Doug Franklin January 17, 2013

Most youth workers understand year round training of adult volunteers is essential to having an effective youth ministry. What most youth workers miss is the opportunity to develop adult volunteers into real leaders. Having adult volunteers is good, having them lead part of the youth ministry is great! Volunteers can do more than referee small groups; they can be given ownership of parts of the ministry and be released to lead by their giftedness, making a huge impact in the student ministry. We sell them short when we just give them a calendar and ask them to show up once per week. Did Jesus ask his disciples to give one night a week? Did he cast the vision of them helping out with the ministry or did he call them to lead it? I know this is somewhat out of context but I want you to see that church culture has been pushing us to ask people for less commitment instead of more commitment. We also need to stop thinking about us running the youth ministry with the adults only helping, and start thinking about giving away leadership so our adult volunteers can experience the power of God working through them as they use their gifts. Here at LeaderTreks we are making resources that will help you develop your adults into leaders, not because we think they will sell but because we think it will make a huge difference in your ministry.