During my annual review last month, my senior pastor asked me to spend the first part of the year recruiting more volunteers for the youth ministry program. Since I started working at my church a year an a half ago as the youth pastor, we have unfortunately lost some volunteers. However, I didn't think too much about it; I have been able to pick up the slack by doing all the teaching, making sure the room is set up for youth group, and planning the upcoming retreat by myself. Personally, I thought things had been going much better since I started doing more! Nevertheless, my senior pastor insisted I "build a team of trusted volunteers."
I put an announcement in the church bulletin asking for new helpers a few Sundays back, and five adults said they wanted to help. They have actually been nice to have around at youth group. They shovel the sidewalk on snowy Wednesday nights before youth group and hand out pencils and Bibles, and it was nice to be able to tell someone to clean up the unfortunate mess that occurred during the popular "Drink a gallon of milk during Bible study" game. However, this week the new helpers became meddlesome. I received an email from a mom who's been helping with a suggestion (what do moms know about youth ministry?) on how to get students to interact more during youth group. To make matters worse, two of the new helpers have asked to help lead during an upcoming series, and one actually had the nerve to meet with a student during the week for coffee to pray about a difficult situation the student had been having at school. That's my job! What can I do?
Sincerely,
Lone Ranger in Laramie
Lone Ranger:
It's easy to get discouraged when people who are supposed to be helping you begin to venture onto ground that should be reserved for professional youth workers like you and me. If you do not get a handle on the situation, the suggestions will keep coming, and your volunteers may start to do things differently than you would do them. This is a serious threat to your authority as the youth pastor, the only one in the church who really understands your youth. Thankfully, the remedy for your problem is quite easy to implement. In fact, it involves doing nothing at all in some situations!
- Do not return your volunteers' phone calls or emails. Just pretend the messages don't exist, and soon, the volunteers won't either! If you have very persistent volunteers, just tell them that you only communicate via an obscure invitation-only social networking site that's all the rage with the kids. Tell them that they'll have to wait to get an invitation to the website before they can drop you a note.
- Allow a volunteer to take charge of something, but provide no support and no resources. Chances are, the volunteer will eventually become frustrated and quit.
- Whatever you do, refrain from any kind of encouragement or praise. A word of encouragement is often enough fuel to keep a volunteer going for a few more weeks and is exponentially more potent when delivered in the presence of others within the church.
Sincerely,
Youth Pastor
Dear Youth Pastor is a public service to the good people who read this blog, and letters are published every Thursday. To ask Youth Pastor a question, just email him at DearYouthPastor@hotmail.com.
