Recruiting, Equipping and Maintaining an Adult Work Force

Recruiting an Adult Work Force

All throughout the year, we spend hundreds of hours recruiting adult workers from within our church for junior high work. This is no easy task, especially in a "cell-based" church, like Xenos, where the focus is maintaining healthy adult outreaching small groups. The tension is definitely there because so many adults are busy working and discipling others in their own adult home groups. It's not an easy job to convince them to take on another ministry with the youth. However, because so many of the top leadership in our church esteem youth work as a top priority, the recruiting job is made  easier.   Both of our lead pastors are involved in youth work, despite their heavy responsibility in leading the church. In addition, about half of the eldership and management team are involved as well. We're very fortunate to have them promote the youth ministries in our church.   Here are some of the steps we take in recruiting adults.  

Adopt-A-Cell
It has been extremely difficult trying to staff our growing student groups. It seems every time we turn around, more workers are needed. Adopt-A-Cell may be the key to keeping up with the growth.

Adopt-A-Cell is where adult home groups adopt a jr. high cell group by sending adult workers to needy jr. high cell groups. Here's how it works. An adult group sends a team of two or four workers to a particular cell group. Most groups will send the same two workers to each cell group though others may rotate pairs of workers. Because jr. high cell groups only meet every other week, the commitment is manageable. Because these "Adopt-A-Cell" workers are not usually experienced with youth, we provide an experienced jr. high worker for each cell.

Ministry Highlight
At least once a year, the division coordinator of student ministries gives a compelling (absolutely no emotional pressure--ha! ha!) presentation at our Adult Central Teachings about the student work and the need for additional help.  The idea is to sign interested folks up that day.   When folks sign the interest card, we get their name, phone number and their adult home group.  Later that week, we phone them and try to have them come in for an interview. 

 Weekly Update (Bulletin) Announcements
Maybe two or three times per year we stick an announcement in the Weekly Update. It goes something like this, "Do you need more money? How about a nice new car? What about that huge home on the golf course you've always dreamed of? All this can be yours if you join our student ministries jr. high volunteer staff."  Well, not exactly. It really goes something like this: "The jr. high ministry needs six more adult female workers to help us lead two girls bible studies. If interested, please contact...." We state the specific need and ask for volunteers to help us out.

Visitations
Sometimes we go to the high school group and ask if any can volunteer for jr. high work. Often our more committed Christian high schoolers make the best jr. high workers because they are so not only committed to God's work, but also closely related in age with the middle schoolers. 

Prayer
This is a big part of our recruiting process.  We constantly remind our workers to pray for more volunteers.  When workers come to us asking for more help, they usually get one response from us, "Well, it's time to get on your knees and pray."  We've found God always has a way of providing.  One scripture we need to keep in mind often is  Luke 11:9-10....ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened to you..."

Equipping An Adult Workforce

Efforts need to be made in equipping our adult workers for student work because it's easy to lose the vision for this work and become complacent.   We regularly need fresh insights, our vision cleared, and new practical ideas. Therefore, our leadership provides several opportunities to accomplish this. 

Quarterly workers meetings  
Each month we get together for a couple hours to discuss the health of our group, share ideas, and fellowship together.  We feel these meetings are vital to the cohesiveness of our workforce because there's really no other time we can get together and discuss the health of the group.  Even though we are together during our Blow Out, JAM, and Cell Groups, we still can't talk much with each other  because we're focused on the students.   so, we really value this time and expect all of our workers to commit to this meeting.    Each meeting will usually include some applicable scripture, upcoming events, recap of recent events, brainstorming,  group prayer, and lots of food!   

Annual half-day long training seminar
Each January, we bring our jr. and sr. high workforce together for an all day training seminar. We view seminar is a real treat because we get to be with each other all day long, without interruptions!  During the seminar, we hold large plenary sessions  which usually clarify our core values and vision.  In these sessions we also try to assesses how we are measuring up to the core values and vision.   For practical implementation, we offer smaller workshops lead by some of our more experienced workers. The main goal of this day isn't just to motivate our troops, but to put our finger on the pulse of our groups and determine how we can improve and move ahead spiritually--reaching and discipling students more effectively. The workers really seem to like this day because it gives them a chance to be with their co-workers, sharing and receiving ideas while getting their vision renewed.

Annual road trip to another student group
These road trips are quickly becoming an annual tradition. At least once each year, several workers and student pile in vans and head to another city to investigate how other youth groups operate.  This is a great time to gain new practical ideas while strengthening the vision for our own group. Usually we'll visit the group in action, ask lots of questions, and head back to the hotel room for debriefing sessions. Oh yeah, we also make plenty of time for sight seeing and fellowship! In the fall of 2000, we went to see Ginghamsburg Church's jr. high program in Dayton, Ohio. In 1999, we visited Willow Creek and made sure we visited the Sears Tower, Shedd's Aquarium, the Field Museum, and of course, a Chicago style pizza restaurant. It was quite an experience for the restaurant manager to squeeze 30 of us in an already  crowded eatery. Hats off to the manager!

Four week training class. 
Something new this year is our four week training class. As you are reading this, some of our most seasoned workers are busy researching all kinds of resource materials as they put together this youth workers training class.  Some of the topics will include, "How to disciple a jr. higher," "How to work with parents," "Adolescent development," "Time Management -Balancing more than one ministry."  This class is long overdue and we're looking forward to it's arrival.  We hope the majority of our workers will take this course within the next two years. 

Maintaining An Adult Workforce

As  workers in Student Ministries, none of us are immune to letting our own spiritual life run aground. Often you'll hear how famous youth workers slipped into immorality and other spiritual trouble because they had little accountability with other adult peers.  In our Student Ministry programs, we require all of our workers to be  actively involved in adult fellowship where they can build healthy accountable relationships and be fed challenging Bible teachings. Our church has about 100 home Bible study groups from which to choose and we hold out for consistent home group involvement before we accept a volunteer worker in our ministry. 

Adult Student Worker Fellowship groups
In addition to our regular adult Bible study groups, we offer special fellowship groups for any junior high or high school workers (and their spouse) who would like to attend. These fellowship groups provide a place where adult workers can hang out together and relax, share, pray, and study the word. Such a meeting also provides better communication between workers & leaders, as well as fostering a sense of unity and closeness among the workforce.  New workers joining the team find this a great place to get to know other workers, and to get input on how to be effective in junior or senior high  ministry.

  Other FAQ's about how we interact with fellowship groups:

  Does every student worker have to attend one of the adult student  worker fellowship groups? No, only those who want to. The main issue is that our workers should be fostering healthy relationships with other adults and while getting spiritually challenged in normal Christian body life.

What goes on in an adult student worker fellowship group?  Lots of camaraderie, Bible study, group prayer, and recreation. 

With those adult workers not in an adult student worker fellowship group, how would you know if they are declining spiritually? At the time the adult worker joins our ranks, we try to establish a working relationship with that new worker's home group leaders. We rely on home group leaders to let us know if the worker in question is getting over their head, declining spiritually or whatever. We also hope our workers themselves will be open and honest with us about their spiritual and personal lives.