Not too long ago I was asked to jot down a few simple thoughts about youth ministry volunteers; specifically what to do with them.

If you’re like most people, including myself, when presented with the “What to do with volunteers” question your mind may quickly start making a list of all the “things” your volunteers can do in your ministry…the various roles, tasks etc. that need doing.

But, when I thought about it a bit longer I landed on three big-picture things professional youth workers should be doing with their volunteers. Three things that, I believe, will yield longer term fruit than simply giving them tasks.

EMPOWER: Don’t just give them tasks, but empower them to own significant chunks of your ministry.

EQUIP: Empowerment is great, but not if volunteers don’t feel equipped and trained to do the stuff they have been empowered to do.

ENCOURAGE: I’ve never lost a volunteer from my team because he/she felt too encouraged! I have, however, lost several because they felt under-appreciated.

Our junior high ministry here at Saddleback has a couple of openings for college graduates interested in a two-year internship. We’ve had lots of interns on our team over the past several years and I think it has always proved to be a “Win-Win”.

We win because we get an additional full-time member on our team for a couple of years.
Interns win because they get invaluable experience to take with them to their next ministry setting.
We all win because we get to share life and build lasting friendships.

If you’re interested email our intern director, Jana Sarti, at Janas@saddleback.net

- Today I was supposed to leave for Kenya with some of our youth ministry team, my daughter and another 8th grade student. Unfortunately we decided it was best to cancel the trip due to the political unrest. The area we were to go is one of the areas most affected by the turmoil. I’m really sad because the timing seemed perfect, the team was great and I was excited to see how God was going to use us.

- Both my kids seem to really enjoy writing. My daughter has been faithfully blogging for close to a year and my 10-year-old son, Cole, just talked us into letting him begin as well. I’m interested to see if he sticks to it. So far, he’s posted every day.

- If you live in Southern California or Arizona and are looking for a great event for your junior highers, I recommend Jr. High Believe that is held in Palm Springs in March. I happen to be speaking there this year so it may be the year to skip! They host numerous weekends all around the country, and really do put on a great 24-hour event for young teens. It’s cheap, fun, spiritually challenging, easy and created specifically for junior high students. It may be worth considering for a future retreat.

- Relevant Books has a pretty cool little line called The Foundation of Faith series that has shortened, pocket-sized versions of some great reads. Currently I’m reading Thomas a Kempis’ classic, [...]

Continue Reading “Random Randomness”

Lesson Topic: Week One of our Series: SCARRED…Life Hurts; God Heals
Attendance: Above Average
‘Fun Factor’: Above Average
Volunteer Involvement: Above Average
Music: Above Average
Lesson Quality: Above Average
Length of Lesson: 26 mins
Student Response: Above Average

One of our best weekends in a really long time, but for no real particular reason. It was just one of those times when everything seemed to fall into place. Our music was tight, our games were fun, the lesson was engaging and interesting (we are teaching a three-week series on how to properly deal with hurts)….A great weekend.

Tonight my extended family is heading to Hollywood to see Wicked. It will be the first time for most of us, but the second time for Rachel and Kayla. We decided to keep the kids out of school tomorrow, stay the night in Hollywood and have some family fun tomorrow. I’m not a huge musical fan, which combined with the fact that I don’t like the Wizard of Oz makes me nervous, but everybody who has seen Wicked seems to speak really highly of it so I’m actually looking forward to seeing it for myself. At the very least it will give me some context for the songs on the soundtrack that seem to be playing in my wife’s car constantly. Should be an awesome time.

As we do at this time each year, our junior high team is heading out for an overnight Summer planning retreat. We’ll spend our time talking PDYM strategy and tweaking job descriptions, planning our Summer events and brainstorming teaching topics based around our Summer theme which is Full Service Summer (sorta a retro gas station/garage look).

We’ll get a lot of work done, but the highlight is simply the fact that we can get away as a team to hang out.

Lesson Topic: Week Two of our Series: It’s Okay To Be Short
Attendance: Above Average
‘Fun Factor’: Average
Volunteer Involvement: Average
Music: Above Average
Lesson Quality: Above Average
Length of Lesson: 24 mins
Student Response: Average

We had a good weekend with a few fun elements. Matt Hall who just happens to be our shortest jr. high team member taught the final weekend of ‘It’s Okay to Be Short’ and did a great job. Instead of just a band, we had an entire jr. high choir (something we do about every 6 weeks or so).

Lately we’ve been having a ton of first-time visitors which has been exciting to see. I’m constantly surprised by who brings friends. It’s usually not the super popular core kids but the average attenders who are involved but not overly. My hunch is that our core kids are the students who have the most ‘churched’ friends and aren’t rubbing shoulders with non-believers as much as other students are….something we need to change!

First, the favor:
I mentioned earlier that Simply Junior High is putting together it’s first-ever junior high resource catalog. They would LOVE some shots of jr. highers playing guitar hero…which I can’t seem to provide. If you have any, would you be willing to email them to Natalie@simplyyouthministry.com

Now, the opportunity:
Group Publishing is getting ready to release a subscription based newsletter for junior high workers, which I think is fantastic. It’s a short, 10-12 page monthly print piece. They are looking for contributors to write articles and such. I don’t know how to attach a document to my blog (is that even possible?), so I’m just gonna post the information below that Group asked me to pass to folks like you.

We need your help!

We’re creating a brand-new junior high newsletter, and we’d love to add your great ideas. We’re looking for games, discussion starters, Bible studies, retreat ideas, service ideas, outreach ideas, small group ideas—whatever has worked for you in your ministry to junior highers. We only want ideas that are specific to the junior high age group.

We’re also looking for longer pieces that deal with building your volunteer team and partnering with parents—these can be as long as 400 words.

So send your ideas to sfirestone@group.com, put “Junior High Newsletter” in the subject line, and if we use it we’ll pay you $50 for the short ideas and $150 for the longer pieces.

On Tuesday, a bunch of the junior high and high school staff went to lunch together. A few of us happened to notice that the Claw Game appeared to have a Homer Simpson doll in some sort of funky radioactive get up, and that it was easy pickins‘….or so we thought.

Once we got started, we refused to quit until we had him in our hot little hands. I’m sure it ended up being the most expensive Radioactive Homer doll ever purchased.

If the studies are correct, that people make their minds up within the first 2-90 seconds, youth ministries have a whole lot of ‘first impression’ opportunities. The studies also indicate that once somebody forms an opinion, for good or for bad, based on those few initial seconds, they are unlikely to change their mind. WOW!

A few first impression opportunities in a typical junior high ministry:
- A visitor walks into your meeting room.
- A parent shows up to a parent meeting (wouldn’t that be nice!).
- You make an appearance on a public school campus.
- Your ministry’s website.
- Promotion Sunday

There are countless others. I’d be interested to hear what you think the top 3 ‘first impression’ opportunities might be.