On Our Way To Crazy

One of the hardest parts of my job is recruiting new adults to help out with the youth group. It’s a very rare, excessively wonderful occurrence when a new person comes to your church who worked the students at his old church and wants to get involved and has tons of experience. The process is generally much more along the lines of pulling teeth.

It takes a pretty special kind of person to get actively involved in the lives of junior high and high school kids. You have to screen pretty heavily. You have a much better chance getting recommendations and suggestions from pastors and care leaders than from just throwing out a wide net to the whole congregation and hoping to catch someone good. You could, potentially, spark the interest of someone who never considered youth work before but is a perfect match. More likely, however, you get a few weirdos who would be a disaster and you have to figure out how to tell them that you were just kidding, you don’t actually need help after all.

I try. I really do. But part of the problem with not having enough volunteers is that you also don’t have time to find new people because you are working so hard to cover everything that would be getting done if you had more volunteers.

But! This year! I have found help. Amazing, wonderful, experienced, excited help. I used all my resources, I dug deep deep deep, and I found some people. I am pumped.

We had our first meeting this week, and I spent a lot of time in advance researching and putting information together to help everyone get started. It was starting to come together, but I was missing a key piece that could really help them understand what they were getting into.

Then I found this video. If you have ever wondered what exactly it is that I do, or if you would do well in youth ministry, watch it. Your feelings will be made clear to yourself pretty quickly.