We have a water canon outside the Refinery building at Saddleback Church (what church doesn’t?). Here’s a video they shot of some unsuspecting attendees getting a little blast from our water feature. Good times.

Big Picture Principles:
1. God has the leaders, you just have to find them
- God cares more about your youth ministry than you do. You just have to look for them in expected and unexpected places
– Remember Marv? 70-year-old volunteer
– Students recruited him
– “You know Marv loves you, don’t you?” – kids lined up for it
– A healthy youth ministry depends on a dependence on the power of God
–10% of your volunteers will feel called by God, 90% will be asked
–Click this link to read a post I wrote about how Josh Griffin wooed me into some youth ministry responsibilities

2. Raise the bar, raise healthy leaders
– It’s always easier to hire somebody than fire somebody
– Exodus 18:17-23
– You can do youth ministry, but not alone
– 1 Peter 5:2-3
– Have a screening process (application, background check, requirements)
– Saddleback’s volunteer process is in First 2 Years of Youth Ministry and Purpose Driven Youth Ministry
– Here’s an article written by Doug Fields entitled Why Do You Ask About Child Abuse On Your Potential Leader Application

3. Encourage your leaders
– Redirect encouragement to your volunteers
– Be specific with praise
– Value leaders publicly
– Here’s a link to some great articles and resources to train and encourage volunteers
– Box of thrills at camp – volunteer idea

4. Volunteers need
– Care
– Conversation
– Confrontation
– Challenge
– Here’s a link to an article about keeping volunteers

Key Learnings

1. Training meetings are overrated. One-on-one care is more effective (on a personal note: training meetings are still important for training and encouragement of the volunteers as a group)
2. Great communication goes a long way
3. Leading volunteers is a ministry within itself

Other Ways

1. Ask leaders to find or refer you to potential leaders
2. Ask your pastor what he’s speaking on and then give him illustrations about the great stuff going on in your ministry that fit in with his message
3. Get them to volunteer for a short-term special event then put them with your all-star kids & coach the kids to make them fall in love with youth ministry
4. Equip and encourage them
5. Have many levels and ways to get involved as volunteer leaders

Related Resources:

– Developing a Strong Volunteer Team, by Doug Franklin
– Removing Somebody From Your Leadership Team, by Doug Fields
– How to Fire Volunteers, by Mary Margaret Mitterling
– Help! I’m A Small Group Leader

Help! I’m A Volunteer Youth Worker

Help! I’m A Woman In Youth Ministry

• SimplyYouthMinistry.com
• SimplyKurt.com
• MoreThanDodgeball.com

Site Doug didn’t mention, but you definitely need to put at the top of your bookmarks:

• VolunteerYouthMnistry.com

Thursday night of PDYM I got to have dinner with a bunch of guys from the conference. Good times. For many in the group, it was the first excursion to the sweetness of Chipotle.

Students are waiting for leaders to believe in them; to challenge them to do youth ministry. – Doug Fields (Loosely quoted)

A way I see students getting involved in ministry is students inviting students. Some of my guys are on the Tech Team. Zack joined a couple of years ago and has been trained on all of our audio/visual equipment in the Refinery. He has helped build the team by recruiting and training his friends to join the team.

One of these students is Kevin. Kevin is in my small group because he was recruited to the Tech Team by Zack. It may seem a little backward, but Kevin is now working on discipleship as a result of his involvement in the ministry. Typically students would become disciples before becoming committed to ministry. I love that our ministry doesn’t force people to implement the purposes in their lives in a specific order.

Sarah leads the girls’ group in the same home where my group meets. She started out as a student in our ministry in a group that met in the same house where I was teaching. When she was in our high school ministry she served on our worship team. It’s so great to see her now serving as a small group leader and watching her challenge her students to get involved in ministry.

As a volunteer, it’s important to always nudge students toward serving opportunities. Not only do we help them to serve, but we also plant seeds in their minds that they will one day come back and serve alongside us in youth ministry when they’re adults. It’s so rewarding to see students serve in high school and then come back after high school and inspire the next generation to do the same.

Doug mentioned these ministries in the session:
1. Glue Boys – an award-winning documentary by Philip Hamer, former student
2. Riders 4 Christ – a ministry headed up by Kyle Loza, former student and 2X X-Games gold medal winner

A great way to develop your students into leaders is by bringing them to the 2009 PDYM Student Leadership Conference

1. The header of this blog is a picture my small group and two other groups which meet on Wednesday night in a local home. This picture was taken the night Saddleback’s high school pastor, Josh Griffin, came by with cookies and milk. Read about it here

2. Megan Hutchinson talked about Life Hurts God Heals. Check out the website

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3. Megan also mentioned the series Scarred that we do in conjunction with teaching Life Hurts God Heals in small groups

4. Life Hurts/God Heals at SimplyYouthMinistry.com

5. Small Groups From Start To Finish answers all of the questions about how we do small groups at Saddleback Church’s Student Ministries. Click the link above or pick it up from the bookstore at PDYM

6. Katie mentioned the attendance system we use for high school small groups. It’s pretty sweet. The company we use is ChurchTeams.com

7. Resources Doug recommended in this session:

8. Neely talked about PDYM community. She wants to hear your story. E-mail your story to Jana Sarti

Our Ladera Ranch high school small groups recorded a word of encouragement for PDYM youth workers.

Thanks for all you do! Have a great conference. We hope you go home encouraged, spiritually refreshed and equipped to continue striving toward healthy youth ministry.

In this session, Doug and the crew talked about worship. I serve as a leader at the high school service on Saturday nights at 6:30. I also served a few weeks in Wildside when they started meeting around tables.

A few thoughts I had:

• • Kurt mentioned that ministry changed when we moved into the Refinery. What I found is that ministry became easier when we got the pool tables, ping pong tables, etc. What I would do is find a pool table with a kid playing by himself and join in on the game. While we’re busy playing the game, it’s so easy to strike up a conversation. As more students arrive, I’ll either turn the game into a four-player game or hand my pool cue off to a student to draw more people in. As I add people to the game, I involve all of the students in the conversation. Before we had these games, it was more difficult to round up students and help them connect with each other.
  • Josh mentioned that he would love to have 2 volunteers per row. I will admit that rows are much more difficult than tables. What would help volunteers to stick is to involve them in the program somehow as a way to introduce them to the students. Because we’ve lost the tables at the weekend service, it’s more difficult for volunteers to connect with students as part of the worship service.
  • Vixy.net – Josh mentioned this as a place they get resources from online.
  • Doug mentioned how he handles distractions. See my post about how volunteers can alleviate them from the program and free the speaker up to communicate.
  • They showed the trailer for the movie To Save A Life. Here’s a link to the website
  • Here’s a link to Worship Band From Start To Finish. You might be able to get it cheaper at PDYM. Not sure.

Here’s a link to the video Doug showed in Session 3 about Penn (from Penn and Teller) receiving a Bible from an audience member. I’m going to use this tonight as a discussion starter with my small group guys. Good stuff!