Putting Adult Volunteers First

By Doug Franklin August 1, 2013

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.