Team Up! Maximizing Adult Impact in Your Ministry

As the new school year kicks into gear, youth pastors all over the country are in the hunt for some strong and committed adult leaders to help lead their ministries this fall. Why do we need these adults so badly? Here are three reasons…

1. To reach as many as possible. Youth pastors are a strange lot. We have an amazing tolerance for the worst forms of pizza, hard rock music, discount sodas, and bad hairstyles. Even though all of our unique and interesting personality defects may attract teenagers to us and our ministries, it’s far more likely our students will have more in common with other adult volunteers within our ministries. We need to surround ourselves with the most diverse group of godly adults we can find, so that we can effectively reach all the different breeds of “teenager.” It’s also far more likely that the adults in your church will be there for the youth years after you’ve gone.

2. To ensure maximum impact. When Jesus lived on the earth, he didn’t make it his mission to personally meet and minister to every single person living at that time. Instead, he recruited a group of 12 men and personally mentored and trained them to join in that work with him. I believe that Jesus used this model, not because he was incapable of ministering to every person, but because he knew that the people he created were incapable of reaching large groups of people relationally. If we’re going to reach every student that God brings into our ministries, we need an army of adults who are willing to invest in the lives of the youth on a personal level.

3. To take the pressure off of us. How many times have we planned something on our own, did all of the prep work ourselves, and the event just fell flat? Then we hear the adults say, “If he had just asked us we could have told him that it wouldn’t work!!” One day after I had endured another poorly attended event, I decided to do just that—ask the adults. I put together a team of adults who could help me organize and plan the events for the next quarter. They were excited to help and were very enthusiastic in their proposals. After a few events, the adults and parents became much more sympathetic to the challenges of motivating youth to do just about anything. We bonded as a team that won and lost as a team.

Once your team is assembled and ready for ministry, help them catch the vision and excitement of helping youth become fully devoted and fully developed followers of Jesus Christ!!! Got more reasons? Email them to mwilliams@cchville.org.

Mark Williams is the Lead Youth Pastor at Community Church in Hendersonville, Tennessee where he lives with his wife and six children.