Finding Leaders for Youth Ministry by Darin Stevens

Categories: Youth ministry articles

“How can we find leaders to help with our ministry?”

Whenever I talk with other youth ministers and they share their biggest needs, ‘more leaders’ usually ranks first or second.

I was lamenting the difficulty of finding quality leaders with a ministry friend this past week and he said, “Ok, tell me about your current group of young people.  What are you doing to raise up workers?”  This one key question led into a great conversation that brought me back to the basics and clarified where we need to improve.

Because we strive to follow Jesus’ methods for mission, we have been looking a lot at the Gospels and the book of Acts with our trainee youth ministers.  It strikes me that when I read episodes like Jesus feeding the 5000, he didn’t struggle with having enough people to pull it off.  Sure, he was the Messiah and could have bypassed the needs for leaders altogether.  He could have had the meal appear in each person’s lap.  (service time McDonalds would be proud of!)  But he didn’t do it that way.  It says in Mark 6 Jesus ‘directed them (the disciples) to have all the people sit down in groups…so they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties.”  He then gave thanks for the loaves and fish then ‘gave them to the disciples to set before the people.’  Jesus had the leaders he needed to care for the crowd so it didn’t become a mass of people pushing forward for food.  Perhaps the whole point of the miracle in the first place was to give these key workers crucial experience in ministering to people?  The disciples didn’t want to get involved with the problem.  But instead of sending them away, Jesus set up a fast food takeaway, and taught the disciples unforgettable lessons in the process.

It’s also unbelievable to read about the Church’s birthday in Acts 2.  On that day alone, 3000 people were added to the church!   When I read this I ask myself, ‘what would happen in our ministry if 3000 people were added in one day?’  Talk about a need for more leaders!  How could this new community possibly support such a sudden surge in numbers?

In Matthew 9, Jesus is on his final ministry throughout Galilee, travelling with his disciples.  The disciples had watched and joined with Jesus in teaching, healing, casting out demons and showing compassion for the crowds of people.  Jesus knew he was not going to be around much longer to follow up, so he pauses and tells his disciples to pray for more leaders for the movement.  No, wait a minute, he tells them to pray for ‘workers’ for the harvest, not leaders.

What’s the difference?

We would love for you to join us in one of our training opportunities where we fully flesh this out, but for the sake of space, we will summarise.

In Jesus’ ministry we can see him calling followers to ‘come and see.’

We see him calling disciples to ‘fish for men.’

We see him calling out twelve to be apostles or to be leaders in the movement.

All disciples were workers in the Kingdom, fishing for men.  But not all disciples were apostles or leaders.  We cannot expect to find leaders, if we have not raised up disciples or workers.  Raise up workers, and leaders will emerge from the ranks.

You may be thinking, “are we just arguing over semantics here?  I don’t care if you call them workers or leaders.  Either way I need some of them to help with our ministry.”  Stay with me here for a minute…

How can I raise up workers?  Like everything else in life, this will take longer than I want it to.  And I’m going to have to say ‘no’ to some good things now, so that I don’t have to panic over a lack of leaders in the future.

The best place to start looking for workers is among teenagers themselves.  Movements of Jesus are most powerful when we see young people sharing their faith and caring for their peers.  Teenagers expect adult helpers to talk about God and follow God.  But it’s exceptional when they see people their own age doing this.

Because we believe in equipping young people to lead the ministry, we are constantly challenging them to talk with their friends about God and to care for their friends’ spiritual needs.  But we cannot expect teenagers to share their faith, eventually care for small groups of their peers and even lead whole areas of the ministry just by challenging them and giving them the opportunity.  This is too big of a step.  We have been trying to raise up spiritual leaders without first raising up workers.  We must go back and help them take little steps along the way.  Little steps that could progress like this:

• Picking up empty cups and straightening chairs after the drop-in
• Helping to do the washing up after our weekly church meal.
• Bringing an icebreaker or song on CD for our next gathering
• Praying for someone in the group who has a need
• Going on a mission abroad to serve and share faith with people I don’t know (it’s safer!)
• Writing a text to someone outside the church group who is having a tough time
• Sharing my faith story with a friend
• Starting a group I can invite my friends to in order to talk about God

We need to prompt young people to take loads of these little steps.  And we need to make a big deal out of it when they do.  Equip young people to do this work of the ministry and then leaders will start to emerge.

We have been learning a lot in this area, thanks to a few guys from SonLife Classic and Global Youth Initiative who have been studying the Son’s life for many years and passing their insights on to us.  They have helped to map out 7 stages that we are trying to follow for raising up ministry leaders.  All this deepens our conviction that Jesus’ life is the best model for reaching young people today.

Need adult leaders?

My gut says the process isn’t that different with adults.  Too often we find a willing spirit and throw them in the deep-end, only to see them burned out a few months later.  We must identify willing adults, but ask them for small commitments and help them make baby steps from the start.  As they serve, interact with teenagers and catch the vision of the ministry, some of these adults will start to ‘pop’ up and have the confidence and desire to lead in bigger ways.

Coming Next Week from Darin…

6 questions to ask myself about finding adult volunteers