If you are looking for a vocational youth minister to support and grow the ministry of your church then you have probably found the process a bit frustrating. 

When you start searching you quickly discover that there are a very limited number of candidates and even less that you would have on staff.  Unfortunately it’s about to get even worse. In the last two years Youthworks College and Moore have both had a small intake of youth ministry students. Add to that natural attrition and we are going to have a significant problem within three years. On the bright side, it is better to realise this now than later.

The prevailing solution at the moment is to employ a recent graduate who will be an assistant minister and give them oversight of the youth ministry. While it solves the perceived problem, it doesn’t actually create a solution that will help the ministry grow or develop. I am not criticising assistant ministers but there are some simple realities.

1) They went to college to do adult ministry and while they are required to do youth as part of their role they often don’t have the heart or the skill to do it well.

2) New graduates are still learning. It’s only when you look back that you realise just how slow and hard it was for those first couple of years. I think we set up assistant ministers for failure by giving them too many areas of responsibility.

3) While it is good to have oversight it doesn’t create strong leadership, either for the youth or the team.

We are all trying to do the best with the resources we have been given and with no other solutions available we work with what we have got. It is easy to say what the solution isn’t but much harder to offer something constructive back into the conversation.

Are there other options that we need to consider? Are there things we can start doing this year that will start to see fruit in three years time?

Here are three ideas to start the conversation

1) Who in your church has the godliness and the gifts to consider vocational youth ministry? How do you encourage them to consider it as a genuine life option?

2) Can you run a traineeship in your church for youth ministry? They can go to Youthworks College two days a week and work for the church 2.5 days a week. It is relatively inexpensive for the church, it supports the current ministry and it starts to prepare a person for a life of ministry. They can then go on to degree level generalist training if they want.

3) Youthworks and Moore College need to be worthy training providers for candidates considering vocational youth ministry. People are making a big commitment and they need to be confident that we are equipping them well for the task ahead.

These are just some opening thoughts but it would be great to hear what others are thinking.

What do you see as the challenges?

What are you doing to raise up vocational youth ministers?