This is the last of 10 posts in this series.  Although I know I have not covered everything, I am hoping this will give you a good start and thought process on your group.  This post will be on starting a volunteer team of adults to help you with your mission.

One of the biggest blessings in my 7 or so years at my parish was the relationships I built with the initial six kids that came.  They ended up being great leaders in the youth group, sharing in my mission, and truly being the ones that transformed the group and helped it to grow.  Since those youth have graduated, I have not seen the same group of kids.  Why?  Because I am not able to spend as much time with such an intimate group.

I have set two goals for myself when developing an adult team.  Before I get started though, my current situation is that I have five committed volunteers that are helping to lead small groups and a few more that are there to get things done in the background and help things run smoothly.   We are looking for about five more to help with both areas, but are in the middle of that right now.

Goal #1 – Develop Shepherds of Small Groups

Ultimately what I have done with my leaders now is asked them to try and accomplish some of the same things I was doing with my initial group of youth.  I have given them the torch and let them go with it.  We have large group lessons and I give them discussion questions and as many tools as I can, but ultimately I want them to make the group their own little youth ministry, following many of the tips and ideas I have given you in the past posts.

When first starting, be on the look out for those adult helpers.  Find someone with similar goals as you that has a love for the youth and that you can trust and get them involved right away.  When I initially ask someone to help.  I ask them to commit to the first month.  They just show up, I give them something to do, and let them experience it.  After that, I ask them to commit to six months.  If they make it through that, I have a lifer.   We feel out their gifts and decide where to put them.

Give Them Responsibilities and Tools

This is probably the most important part of your job, once your group starts to grow.  Volunteers want to know what is going on, what they should be doing, and how they are doing.  Give them constant training opportunities, have meetings to discuss the goals of the group, and evaluate what they are doing.  One of my goals with this site is to start including training and tools that you can send to your volunteers, so look forward to that.

Stepping Back

For me, one of the hardest parts about adding more adults on to the team was me having to step back from being so involved in everything.  Having the relationships and shepherding youth is a beautiful thing to watch them grow from start to finish.  Pray that one day you will get to the point where you are helping other do what you were able to do.  Give them the same responsibilities you had.

In another sense, you will need to step back from doing some of the other activities that you normally do.  You seriously can not plan and put in to place every aspect of a great program.  You will need volunteers and you will need a lot of them.  Think outside of the box.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have snacks every single week?  Yes it would, so ask a volunteer to be in charge of calling a parent or two each week to bring snacks.  Are you staying an extra hour or two after everyone leaves so you can clean up?  Set up a rotation with the small groups or with the volunteers to be in charge of clean up.  Make a list of things that need to be done and hand them the sheet every week.

While doing this, I would recommend watching a couple of things.  Do not just hand over the things that are uncomfortable for you to do.  It is not always easy to call parents.  One week a month take the job of calling people for food and YOU talk to parents.  Be sure you are still being relational.

Also, once you start doing this, this is about you will be able to do is delegate and support.  In my experience once you have a program that is doing well and you need at least 18 arms to do it, if you are not focusing 80% on training, supporting, and evaluating, someone is being left out.  Take good care of your team, empowering them to do great things.  Trust them and they may let you down, but think of the stupid things you once did.   Continue to trust and you see the fruits of your work multiply.

If you have made it this far into the reading, please consider commenting below or sending me an email with some feedback or questions.  This series actually came about because we noticed people were Googling ‘How To Start A Youth Group from scratch.”  They came to our site and we had nothing for them.

Send us your questions and feedback and we will be sure to answer them here!

God Bless you and your ministry!