Good youth sponsors may be hard to find, but good youth sponsors are good to find!

1. Pray for the leaders you need.  God will provide them.

2. Forget about general pleas in the pulpit or newsletter.  They rarely yield who you need.  They may yield who you don't need!

3. When you have a sense of who has the spiritual gifts needed, start dropping hints.  "I can tell your gift of ________ would really help our teens grow in Christian love and faith.  Maybe you'd like to come sit in on a youth event sometime..."

4. Make an appointment to talk about the position.  Take the candidate to lunch.

5. Be honest about what you need and the time commitment.  Testify to the joys of youth ministry.  Acknowledge the trials.  Answer questions. Ask her to pray about it and consult her family.  Tell her when you'll contact her for her decision.

6. Build a team of people with complementary talents, not cookie-cutter talents.

7. Set up a sponsor rotation, so not everybody is on duty every week.

8. Provide child- care for sponsor's young children.  Pay for it, if necessary, out of the church budget, or get a donor who doesn't want to work with teenagers to underwrite expenses for those who do!

9. Promise and deliver both initial and on-going training for youth sponsors.  Hand them a good youth ministry book, like "Help, I'm A Volunteer" or "The God-Bearing Life."  Bring in a trainer: there are several in your area and they are willing to travel.  Take sponsors to training events, like the Volunteers in Youth Ministry training day at Perkins School of Theology, SMU in Dallas.  Call 1-888-THEOLOG.  Or check out Perkins School of Youth Ministry each January, or various traveling training events.

10. Provide all the tools they'll need, particularly quality curriculum.

11. Pray some more!

BLH

March 9, 2000

© Copyright 2000 by Brian Hardesty