Latest / Student Ministry: What They Don't Teach You / Episode #3 - Volunteers ARE Your Ministry
Transcript
- speaker-1: So Brandon, I don't know about you, but every about March or April is whenever I begin to start thinking about what leaders am I bringing in in August to get ready for the next school year. And so a few years ago, man, I I kind of sent out messages, hey, who's all coming back? Who's ready for, you know, next year, school year? I had like six tell me, Hey Blake, I love it. You know, I've this has been great. It's you know, I just I think it's time for me and my wife. We've been teaching for, you know, 10 years. We're ready to go to an adult life group. Or, you know, hey, you know, me and my wife just got married, we're about to have a baby, we need to take, you know, a year off. And then all of a sudden you're like, Bro, I got like three months to f to fill six to eight different positions. So what in the world do you do whenever you're like, dang it, I got all these spots I gotta fill. What is your go to method to try to be able to fill those spots to recruit incredible volunteers? speaker-0: But we always joke about like how me and you are just different and like you talking about April. I'm I'm like May and June. So all right guys, it's ready to come back. And so like by the July hits, I'm panicking because we start back school in late July. So like, yeah, I have those same problems too, man. And like recruiting volunteers is the single most important thing you can do in my mind in student ministry is like the because They are like they're the heartbeat. They're the ones that help you be successful. And so, you know, I always make coaches reference. And so ⁓ we always joke about, you know, we're we're over here in Mississippi. I'm in between, you know, Starkville and and Tusc and Tuscaloosa. So I grew up in in and I'm over in Nick Saban country. And ⁓ and everybody always jokes about Nick Saban being his incredible coach. But like what makes Nick great is like you ever notice, ⁓ he's got a great coaching tree. And that's not by accident. Like the it's no accident that he's been very successful, but the coaches that he had around him. Are very successful as well because he had great coaches that had helped him be very successful. And so you're only as good as your volunteers. And so making sure you're recruiting volunteers constantly and making sure that you are ⁓ doing everything you can to surround yourself with people who can help you be successful is is an important thing. And so for me, I'm always constantly, constantly looking at our church for people that I think will be great, that will be a good fit. And so You can't just have any volunteer because student ministry, if if they don't love students, they will not last. ⁓ and you know that. Or they will stick it out because you asked them to, but like the kids know they're miserable and which ultimately gonna make the small groups miserable. It's gonna make your big events miserable. And so you gotta find those people. And I know a lot of people say that, ⁓ well, I just don't have that many people. And I don't have that map that you know, that pool of volunteers. And ⁓ maybe you start off with just finding one or two people and and you build them up that way. So we start thinking about specifics. How do how do I recruit? For me, ⁓ I've learned to get creative with recruiting. Obviously, just cold calls ⁓ sometimes work, but like I find unique situations to help those people fall in love with student ministry. ⁓ because I think a lot of people, most people just have a very bad idea of what student ministry is all about. Maybe it's just a bad, like a misunderstanding of what it is. And so I think about what are those ways that I can get them. I'll call that contact high. Maybe it's a bad way to call that, but I call it a contact high. How can I get that contact high in student mission? So for me, like if I have potential people that want to be like I I know like that, I think they'll be a good fit. My first thing I'll do is D now is my biggest recruitment by far. And so what I do is say, Hey, I I need you to be a host home. Hey, can you come help me serve lunch at D now? Because to me, that is like a a like a A beautiful picture of what like a snapshot of what student ministry is all about. Yeah. Get college kids in there, they're pouring to the kids. They've got kids in their homes. You know, they're feeding them and they're sitting around the couch at Bible study. And these people are like, ⁓ my gosh, like these kids are amazing. I want to I want to be a part of that. And so all the people, it never fails. The people that I want to like start doing it, I get can you be a co-host? Can you be a co-leader? And just get around the kids. And then they all, it never fails. They come to me, hey, I I think I want to. Help on Wednesday nights because they they get that contact high and they want to be a part of that more often. So finding your unique ways and maybe being a you know, we both do small groups and so that's like a big part of ours. And some some a lot of churches don't do that and they don't need small group leaders, which that's another episode we think you need to have small groups, but you need them, but yeah you need to have small groups. But you know, maybe you just need somebody to come help with check ins or just come help with crowd control on Wednesday nights. But if you can find ways to just ease them in the door. Don't just say like drop them off in the deep end. Hey, come lead this small group. ⁓ here's the curriculum, figure it out. That's gonna scare anybody away. But find a way to just say, hey, can't come come get around it. Get close. Get your feet wet. And if you can get them in the door and just show them what it's all about, then you'll find that they build confidence. They want to be a part of this. And then you can slowly build them into it. speaker-1: Yeah, and just to touch a little bit on what you were saying, I and I don't know if you meant to say it this way, but I love it. It's ⁓ you identified D now as kind of my first tier. Like if I can get you to come to D now, then I can move you to here, then I can move you to here. And so I have a a tier system kind of in my head when I'm inviting people. ⁓ we have fifth quarter coming up. Fifth quarter to me is one of the easiest ones. That is tier one. I need you just to be a warm body, make sure kids aren't making out in the parking lot, making sure that they're not breaking stuff. I literally don't need you to do anything but just be there, maybe serve them some ice cream. But like so for those events, I'm not recruiting my person that's coming to every Wednesday night and every Sunday. I'm trying to get those fringe parents that I'm like, there might be potential. Let's get them to come to fifth quarter. You know, let's get them to come to some of these events. And then for me, the next one is our D now too. Ours is Collide Weekend. ⁓ and ours is at a campground. And so it's a little different than than what y'all are doing host home wise. ⁓ on those weekends, I don't really need parents to do a lot, but make sure kids go to bed at night. ⁓ we bring in college leaders, they're doing all the heavy lifting that weekend. And so if a parent is good at collide weekend, then I'm like, I I liked how you were, you were not miserable to be around, you might can go to camp. ⁓ because camp, I do ask you to do a lot more. And so that's that's a tier. But then also for us, Wednesday nights is kind of our first tier for small group leaders. Because Wednesday night, I'm not asking you to teach a lesson. I'm asking you to go over six questions. That I wrote for you based on my sermon. And if they're good at Wednesday nights, I'm all right, let's promote you to the big league Sunday mornings. That's teaching a lesson. That's doing a little more. And so I think if you're a student pastor listening to this and you don't have a tier system kind of really thought out, you probably as I'm walking through it, you may be like, ⁓ yeah, that our event is this, you know, this event is that. Start figuring out that tier system and then begin to invite hierarchy of tears. That way you can speaker-0: And so I don't know wherever the biggest thing we have to make sure. Not we're not just doing a shotgun. speaker-1: That can do these lower level ones, but not that are your higher levels. Kind of the the main things that are more difficult. speaker-0: You've got to make sure kind of say that you are within 10. And then you can recruit. If your whole strategy is let me just make an all call from the pulpit or for through emails, then you're not going to get the quality of volunteers that you want. And so you got to know, like, I want this person because they are skilled in this area or they're relational in this area. And you go pursue those people and not just get any and everybody. Now, if there's a season where you have to just say, I gotta take who I can get. I get it. But there has to be a plan. You have to be growing and saying, how can I get specific people that can help our ministry be successful? ⁓ and and I think another thing too is like you'll learn and you'll realize as you do a good job of recruiting volunteers and your volunteers are loving it and they're thriving, then they become your best recruiters. I know for me, a lot of times my leaders, my volunteers are recruiting volunteers for me. And it's just like the students, right? I tell my students all the time the students are the best recruiters of their friends and their classmates. Volunteers are the same way. Like I can try to sell you on how great helping student ministry is, but they expect me to say that. When I'm gonna say, hey man, this sucks, come be a part of this. But if your leaders are the ones, your volunteers are the ones hyping it up, hey man, come be a part of this. This is awesome. Then they're gonna show up a lot more because these people are buying what they're selling. You know what mean? And so ⁓ it I know for me, there's times where we talk about like, you know, recruiting volunteers for the next school year. Man, the amount of times I'll have volunteers come to me and say, Hey, Brandon, I've already found my co-leader for next year. Cause their co-leader is is phasing out. They're Hey, I already got my next co-leader. She's a teacher. I'm a teacher. I've been working on her for the last six months. That's music to my ears because they already know what the expectations are. They know how their small group already runs and they already know I want somebody in here that I know I can trust is going to help us continue to be successful. And so if you do a really good job of recruiting, eventually your your volunteers become your your best recruiters because they want to bring people in. To help them be successful as well. speaker-1: Yeah. And so we'll kinda we'll kinda end on on this or kind of start wrapping it up. So here's my kind of like foolproof method that I use to try to bring people in as and I this is really mainly for life group leaders or Sunday school teachers for us. ⁓ so what I start doing is like I said at the beginning of the episode, around March ish, I start asking my people, are you coming back in August? the ones that say no, let's just pretend I have a sixth grade girls leader that says they're not coming back next year ⁓ for whatever reason. And I say, okay, thank you for letting me know. And so in April, I'm trying to start identifying who could potentially fill that spot. And so sometimes like you're saying, my leader may tell me, hey I really like Jennifer. I think Jennifer would be great. Could you know or whatever. Or, you know, or somebody that I've I've had guys laid on my heart. I reach out to that person. Let's just call her Jennifer. I'd be like, Hey Jennifer, ⁓ you know, coming up, Ashley's not gonna be able to be in class ⁓ on Sunday for sixth grade girls. Would you mind ⁓ coming to sit in for her? And but what Jennifer doesn't know is I've asked I've asked Ashley, Hey, take a Sunday off. You know, hey, I know you you go go to adult life group, go be with your husband, go do something, you know, you know, enjoy having a Sunday off. So then I'll say, Jennifer, hey, I need I need you to come fill in for Ashley. You're gonna be teaching with Heather. ⁓ Heather's ⁓ one of the leaders in that class. Heather's gonna do all the teaching. I just need you to come be a warm body, basically. So Jennifer comes, she sits, she gets to learn a little bit about what's going on in class. The class goes well. I talked to her afterward, hey, how was it? That actually wasn't bad. These girls are sweet, you know, all stuff. Okay, great. And about two, three weeks later, I tell Ashley again, hey, would you ⁓ take another Sunday off? You know, hey, like, hey, thank you so much. You I I have somebody that I'm recruiting. You know, would you take another Sunday off? And I tell ⁓ Jennifer again, Hey Jennifer, can you believe Ashley? She took another you Ashley ain't gonna be here again. Would you would you please ⁓ come one more time, be with Miss Heather? And so she does that another time. And then after that Sunday, I'm like, Hey, you know, Jennifer, what's crazy? ⁓ you know, Ashley actually is ⁓ she's needing to take ⁓ you know, a break, so she's not gonna come back next year. ⁓ but hey speaker-0: Ashley Ashley's just struggling to run. speaker-1: Right. Well, you know, but no but I I usually am not I'm nicer than that. But that's joking, I was joking. For the story it sounds funny. ⁓ but then what I tell Jennifer is, Hey, Heather's actually coming back next year teaching and I need a co teacher for her. Would you be willing to potentially teach next year? Would you pray about it? That is vastly different than cold calling her. Hey Jennifer, will you teach sixth grade girls next year? That's it. The answer's no. It's like no, I'm not. But when she's seen the class, she's seen who she'd be teaching with. She'd seen the curriculum. She's seen how it's structured. That is a far much easier yes than cold calling, saying, Hey, I need you to come teach. Because most people, when I recruit them, they'll tell me, Blake, I'm not a good teacher. Like I can't teach. I don't know how to teach. And then what you kind of just full circle moment. And I tell them, I don't need you to be a good teacher. I need you to love students. If you love students, I can teach you how to teach. I can teach you how to do all the little things that a good teacher would do. I just need you to love students. And so once they see students, kind of like you're saying with D now, or when they see students in this small group setting, their heart erupts because this is why we do student ministry too. We love teenagers. We love seeing them come to know Jesus. And so to me, that is an easy way, and that may not work for your Sunday school method, but figure out a way to kind of slowly bring people in ⁓ so they can see it before you ask them to be a volunteer fully. Does that make sense? speaker-0: That's good. That's good. I think as we close this thing out, man, as you were talking, the last thing I can think of is, you know, make sure your student ministry is not a a silo ⁓ throughout the church. And that's another way of recruiting. Like I I when when we realized that our ministries were working in silos and our our church members knew our youth group is booming. They knew all like the success from it. But they didn't know what we did and who we were, how we function. They didn't know our culture. They didn't know any of that. And so when I made a conscious decision, say, you what, I'm gonna make sure our church family is celebrating these things in real time. They know what we're doing, what we believe, how we operate, you know, making ministry highlight videos and you know, having ⁓ youth Sundays, takeovers, all these different things to help our church see: hey, this is what God's doing in our student ministry. That also became a huge recruiting thing for us because people are like, I want to be a part of that. You know? And so again, I I wasn't just saying, Hey, this is, you know, God's doing great things. Hey, this is what we do, this is how we do it. This is the culture that we've set. Then the specific people who say, I I want to be a part of that, it was another way of us recruiting. So a lot of times people are not coming to you and want to be a part of your ministry because they don't even know that it exists. Or they know, like, ⁓ yeah, still the ministry have it. But like, do they really know? what you do, why you do it, how you do it. And so once the church as a whole sees that, you'll you'll be shocked by the amount of people says, hey, I I want to be a part of that in some capacity. Maybe it's big events and maybe it's something else. But like they want to be a part of that in some way. And you'll see God begin to work and bring people into your ministry that way. speaker-1: Hundred percent. Last thing, do you know who are some of the best volunteers? Parents. That's a good teaser. Next episode we're talking about parents, parent ministry, how we deal with parents, all the headaches of parents. Come back to the neck next episode. We'll be excited to see you. speaker-0: So you ⁓ Yeah.