Volunteer Youth Worker Podcast

You hope that your group will bond together as a community, but what happens when the bonding goes too far and the group forms cliques? What do you do so that students don’t feel excluded? How can you manage the tension between healthy connection amongst your group and cliques the deny people access to the community?   We want to hear from you! Submit your youth ministry question at youthministry....

Your students are perfectly positioned to reach their peers with the Good News of Jesus, but the challenge is equipping and motivating them. How can you help a student understand evangelism and the steps that they can take to care for their friends spiritually? What can you do as a leader to model healthy evangelism? What would happen if we helped our students take evangelism seriously in their da...

Your main communicator does so much to set up the rest of your ministry. Small groups, spiritual conversations, and life transformation flows out of the teaching/preaching/talk/message. But what happens when the communicator isn’t connecting? Sometimes it’ll be a style and preference question, but sometimes it’s bigger than that. Sometimes it’s because crude humour, too much transparency, lack of...

You know that your students struggle with actions and attitudes that are sinful and wrong, but how do you address and confront those things in a way that is helpful? How can we make space for students to come and be open about their brokenness and not be shamed? How can we be confident and willing to talk about difficult things?   We want to hear from you! Submit your youth ministry question at yo...

As more and more students struggle with mental health, the epidemic leaves us wrestling with how to be helpful on the front lines with students. The disruption that anxiety causes in students is challenging. How can we help build resilient students who can weather the storms of life? What should we say? What shouldn’t we say? What tangible things can we do with students to help them through their...

Your questions are the best questions. We asked you to send us questions about your youth ministry and, wow, did you respond! Here are the four questions we covered in this episode, and as always, you can submit your own for a future episode by heading to youthministry.team   What do you do as a volunteer while the ministry goes through a new youth pastor transition and how do you navigate that wi...

Everything suffers when there’s not enough volunteers on your youth ministry team. Conversations are strained as small groups are not so small. Students fall through the cracks. Morale sinks. Creativity wanes. And everyone starts to wonder how long things can continue. But what if your team culture was so strong that people sat on waiting lists to volunteer? What if people loved serving together s...

When your students are hurting and experiencing sadness, anxiety, fear, or loneliness they might struggle with how best to manage their pain and it can be intimidating and overwhelming when you discover someone has chosen self-injury for their pain management. How should you respond? Who else needs to know? Why would someone who is already hurting on the inside start hurting themselves on the outs...

After spending time and energy investing into the life and faith of a student it can be incredibly discouraging when it seems like they aren’t growing anymore, or maybe they are even going backwards. What is the best response when you see that happening? How can you continue to encourage growth without being overbearing? How can you give them healthy space without giving up? What do you actually s...

You know that your students should be reading the Scriptures on their own, but how do you encourage them to take that step? How can you move from just telling students about the truth of Scripture to helping them discover and search out the truth for themselves? Listen in and discover a practical model that will help you teach your students to read the Bible this week. Welcome to the Youth Ministr...

You’ve committed to showing up consistently in the lives of students, but sometimes they don’t reciprocate. And while there are lots of reasons why one of your students might miss a couple times, when it turns into a pattern what should be our response? It can be confusing, discouraging, and frustrating to think that students may not be as committed as we’d like them to be. Should we say or do som...

When you invest consistently in the life of students it can be shocking how much they are willing to open up and share their struggles. Not only that, but the challenge becomes how best to respond when it comes to sensitive topics. The stats inform us that pornography affects nearly all of the students in our ministries, and by middle school, lots of students are already formed habits around it. A...

Have you had weeks where the ice breakers are falling flat and staying on topic just seems like a chore? You aren’t alone. Leading conversations with students can be extremely challenging, and although the list of suggested questions is helpful, some weeks they just aren’t cutting it. What are you supposed to do when no one wants to answer the questions? Who even writes these things? Have they bee...

Whether it’s a student opening up about a toxic home life, an addiction, mental health, grief and loss, or some other significant issue, the question of dealing with students who are hurting is a question of when not if. And when a student shares about their hurt it can be difficult to know what our response is supposed to look like. When we feel out of our depth, what do we do? And what are we su...

We know that students spend way more time at home than they do with us, but we wonder if that means we should be doing anything to reach out to their families. Should we spark a conversation with their parents? If we made time for that, what would we even say? The conversations at pick up or drop off can often be awkward -- are there ways to make a connection worthwhile? Welcome to the Youth Minis...

It’s too easy to become an afterthought. Prayer gets pushed to the end of the night, quickly asking if anyone has prayer requests, frantically figuring out how to speed up one student’s long description of his cat’s intestinal issues or another’s great aunt’s gout. Is this what prayer is? Should we be modeling something different?   Welcome to the Youth Ministry Team Podcast. Youth Ministries rise...

One of the challenges in youth ministry is the constant churn of new students. If you are creating a welcoming environment, students will want to bring their friends, which means you are constantly trying to build relationships with new students. But how do you build rapport and connection with someone who might be skeptical, nervous, and hesitant? How do you have a conversation with a new student...

Volunteering in Youth Ministry can be difficult and draining, especially when you are unsure if you are making a difference in the lives of your students. How do you know that your efforts aren't in vain? Does volunteering in Youth Ministry really make a difference?  Welcome to the Youth Ministry Team Podcast. Youth Ministries rise and fall on the team of volunteers, so this podcast is for the WHO...

Welcome to the Youth Ministry Team Podcast. Youth Ministries rise and fall on the team of volunteers, so this podcast is for the WHOLE team. Join the conversation as we tackle the practical questions you’re asking so you can be encouraged and equipped as you head into your role in your youth ministry this week. Mentioned in this episode: Update for 2024 Lots has changed since this episode initiall...