As Youth Pastors, one of our primary functions is working with Volunteers. From Recruiting, to Training, to Delegating, a Youth Ministry can really only ever be as successful as its volunteers can be, no matter how “strong” the Youth Pastor appears.
With that in mind, there are many things we can do to keep our Volunteers happy. Over the next few weeks, I’ll go into some ways to keep Volunteers happy, Starting today.
The first tip to keep volunteers happy might actually involve upsetting them at the same time.
A friend of mine wrote a great post this week about how much time we spend in the office. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend checking it out. In the post, he talks about how to schedule your time in the office, and I agree with everything he says except for one thing, including Youth Services in your hours per week.
If you want to keep your volunteers happy, don’t expect anything from them that you yourself wouldn’t do.
Many of our volunteers work full-time jobs. Many of them have kids. In fact, only 30% of our Youth Staff are single or don’t have kids. So they are busy. Now add on top of that however long they are asked to serve in Youth Ministry each week, and it can add up. In all honesty, its expecting a lot of them, and I want to honor that and recognize that, because I appreciate it.
But if I am going to ask them to do this, I need to do it myself. So right now, when I lay out the hours I work per week and get close to 50, it does not include time spent at Youth Services. Unless I am out to coffee with a volunteer, or a meal, I don’t count time that is spent with Volunteers as work time.
And honestly, If you want to keep volunteers happy in your youth ministry, you shouldn’t either.
