Where do we get the staff from? — I’m always short of volunteers!
This is surely the cry of the hard pressed youth minister as we enter another new year of ministry. You may have all the best ideas, the best material on the market and the most fantastic premises to work in but if you don’t have the staff to run a group with a good ratio of leaders to young people you may well struggle to make an impact. If we are to engage with young people we need the people to make that connection.
Recruiting staff has always been a tricky problem, but I wonder if we have lowered the bar a bit too much. When 1 Thessalonians talks about ‘sharing not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us’ (2.7) it is not speaking about a superficial relationship. When 1 Peter talks about ‘shepherding the flock’ (5.2), it is implying that the shepherd is committed to the welfare of his flock. How do you reconcile that with the fact that so many of our helpers are having to work harder in their secular employment and the demands of the economic situation means that less time can be given to Christian service? Increasingly, the answer seems to be rotas with different people turning up each week and the acceptance of a once a month ‘spare pair of hands’ as being the norm. So often I hear the complaint that staff cannot be found and you have to do what you can with what you’ve got.
