Training Youth Ministry Volunteers

How can I best equip, train, and involve leaders in my youth ministry?

What do you do to evaluate and train youth ministry volunteers in your ministry? What do you do when leaders don’t meet your ministry’s expectations? Or when other things keep them from attending training sessions?

These are all real questions that you and I face on a weekly basis.

When it comes to training youth ministry volunteers, it’s crucial we remember Paul’s words to the Ephesian church. As a student pastor, our mission is this:

“…to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…” – Ephesians 4:12

We asked Brian Freerksen, long-time student pastor and pastor to answer this question at a SWO youth ministry conference — and wanted to share his thoughts and personal experience with you. If you want to listen to the audio recording, simply click below.

Help Volunteer Leaders Self-Evaluate Themselves

We give our leaders a form for self-evaluations. On the form, we had several questions pertinent to the list of expectations and responsibilities that they signed, and we just asked them, “How are you doing? Give yourself a score between 1 and 10, where would you rate yourself?”

Encouragement vs. Criticism

You’d be amazed at how critical people are of themselves in contrast to your opinion.

My scores for them were always higher than their own, but I didn’t know everything going on in their lives. Once they did that assessment, we divided them by the grades they would work with, whether that be: middle school, ninth, tenth, junior, or senior leaders. A different staff member sat with each of them and discussed their responses, similar to a review at work.

Through doing that, we found more things that we could pray for and encourage them in specific areas instead of simply being critical, or saying,

“You’re not doing this very well, we wish you would live up to this instead.”

This self-evaluation process became an opportunity for us to pour into them.

How to Let Someone Go

Now, there have been situations where they just don’t get it. And we have always tried to help them figure out, “Listen, we need you to do or not do these things,” Some of them were not severe, but questionable.

An example story of asking a volunteer to step down.

Our middle school pastor and I had to sit down with this gentleman and say, “Look, we’ve talked about the expectations we have for you, and we’ve talked with you about the things that we can help you grow in. But we just haven’t seen any progress, change, or conformity to fulfill our expectations.”

He responded that he was very much doing his own thing, he had his own agenda, and we said, “We appreciate what you’re doing, not necessarily how you’re doing it, and the fact that you’re doing it in opposition to what we’re trying to accomplish, it just doesn’t seem like it’s gonna fit.”

About a week later, he sent me an email and said, “You know what, you’re right. I think I’m going to step down from this ministry.”

That situation made it pretty easy.

Now, granted, we still had to deal with the students and the parents who are now wondering, “Why did he step away?” So in that situation, you need to tread carefully and lovingly and come back to our “process” of paperwork that we put out there, reminding, “This is what we ask of you, this is what we expect of you, and if you aren’t willing to follow it, no hard feelings. Go to another place of ministry.”

Or, you can come in line.

I know that sounds harsh, but in some cases, it needs to be done, it just has to be.

When is the Right Time to Focus on Training Your Leaders?

Over the years, I’ve tried every kind of time for meetings. Monthly, quarterly, annual, and I’ve decided that annual meetings just weren’t enough. So we tried Wednesday nights after church, we’ve tried all sorts of different things, and what we did is we just started asking.

When we were doing a meeting monthly, every third Wednesday of the month, we found it was just too much. It was a long day for us, a long day for them, and it was a long day for their children. So we asked them what was convenient for them. What has worked for us, is that we combine our fellowship time with our meeting time.

Focus on Fellowship – Build Relationships

Sunday morning once a quarter, after the service, we prepare lunch for them and we eat together. We fellowship, we play a little bit, and then we do training. Part of that training is, how can you improve as a leader, how can you improve in this area of personal integrity, communication, group facilitation, some practical ministry thing like that, and then close out by getting feedback.

Inviting them to tell us, no matter how long they’ve been working with us, what are things they see that need to change or improve, or what we need to modify about our programming, our ministry, whatever. And so we want to hear their feedback, and what we’ve discovered is when they don’t just sit and have to listen, but actually have the opportunity to give feedback, they are far more likely to attend, and that’s why we try and find a convenient time for them.

We’ve listened to what they’ve suggested, and then we give them opportunities to give feedback rather than just learn something.