I’ve posted in the past about the importance of having legitimate roles and responsibilities for the volunteers in your youth ministry – you can check out some great guest posts about it in posts like 1-Sentence Job Descriptions and Mission Critical Jobs. This week Geoff Stewart offered up his student ministry’s volunteer roles brochure to share with everyone. Download it here!
JG
What do you think?
Well, College Ministry From Scratch has finally released. Actually, it released a few days ago…I just forgot! If you’d like to read a sample (the brief introduction as well as the first chapter) click here.
Below is the table of contents. I hope it’s a help to you and your ministry!
INTRODUCTION
SECTION ONE: Chapter One: A Story of Perceived Success Chapter Two: Creating And Measuring A Sustainable Ministry Chapter Three: Developing A Job Description (that fits our goals) Chapter Four: Your First 90 Days In College Ministry Chapter Five: Understanding College-Age Issues?An Overview Chapter Six: Providing A Place To Belong
SECTION TWO: Chapter Seven: Recruiting Older Adults?Overcoming Obstacles Chapter Eight: Recruiting Older Adults?Characteristics To Look For Chapter Nine: Leading College-Age Leaders Chapter Ten: One-On-One Conversations?Questions To Ask Chapter Eleven: Starting And Sustaining Effective Small Groups Chapter Twelve: Shifts In Teaching Approaches Chapter Thirteen: Seven Critical Teaching Topics Chapter Fourteen: Mission Trips?What To Include And Why Chapter Fifteen: College-Age Retreats Chapter Sixteen: Working With Interns Chapter Seventeen: Church-Based Campus Ministry Chapter Eighteen: When Students Are Away At School
A couple days ago I posted about Simply Youth Ministry’s huge contest called [dougs] Dumb Idea. They are giving away a total 30 Free mission trips to our Week of Hope program, free registrations to the Simply Youth Ministry Conference, and copies of LIVE Curriculum to 3 lucky youth pastors. Simply Youth Ministry just posted video of the day I found out…
This is video of Andy Brazelton and I discovering the contest.
Go here to sign up for the contest!
Good luck!
Ur YM has kicked off for the fall or is about to. How’s ur voluntold team looking?
Mark DeVries in his epic book, Sustainable Youth Ministry, says u should have 1 adult volunteer (engaged and relational I would add) for every 5 of ur youth. How’s that going for you?
Some of u are doing great. Skip the rest of this blog then and go back to chatting on FB.
For the rest of you: having trouble getting enough good volunteers?
Three reasons why: 1) Have you asked the right people?
2) Have you given them a specific job description with clear cut expectations, boundaries, plans and purpose?
3) Are you spending more time with ur teens than w ur volunteers?
Let any one of these three facts go awry and that’s a place to start figuring out why ur begging and pleading for help. Why ur pulling out hairs u can’t spare from ur head. Why uve even resorted to asking the SP if he would like to help “chaperon” the MS lock-in. Ur are one desperate YP if it comes to that!
Stephanie
PS-u can always tell when i’m posting from my phone. grammer, spelling and abbreviations don’t seem to matter to me.
Jeff spoke about our craziness in “Big Church” this weekend. I will have to say he was amazing 
. Feel free to give it a listen.
Click here to see Jeff talk about how God has been working… (click on the message called “Spoonfuls of Life” the message itself is about 20 minutes if you fast forward through the rest of the service).
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Hi Amanda!
Wow i just finished listening to your husbands message and just wanted to let you know that God really spoke through him to me! My husband and i have desperately wanted to live out this community thing in our church, ministry, and life. I have to admit that its a hard thing to do for me because it requires transparency and showing people my weakness. I naturally tend to hide my weakness/ hardships because in the past people have judged me harshly for being weak or not being good enough. But God is still teaching me that it doesn’t matter I still need to be real even if it might mean I get hurt. I really just am learning a lot from your posts! Thank you so much for what you say it has helped me to be a better youth pastor wife! God is doing some really cool things in our student ministries but there is also things that are very difficult to deal with so i am so thankful for how God uses you to minister to me! May God truly bless you and your family!