Gator Huntin' and Recruiting Volunteers

I freely admit my new found love of all things swamp people. I can't quite explain it other than it's a show about a bunch of people who live in the swamps of Louisiana and Florida who hunt gators for a living. Awesome, right? It cracks me up that they have to run subtitles in order to understand what they are saying. These people are straight fearless and somewhat crazy. The show has so captured my attention I recently had a dream that I was hunting gators and woke up in the middle of the night in a panic from an imminent gator attack only to realize it was just a dream, totally freaking my wife out.

So all this gator huntin' has gotten me thinking to the similarities to recruiting youth ministry volunteers (I told you I have gators on the brain).

This probably works best as a series of posts, so let's kick the first one off... A gator hunter often sets out as many as 100 lines in a day with bait and hook in the hopes of catching some quality gators. I am in the midst of recruiting quality youth workers as we speak. I start by sending out lots of feelers, similar to gator hunters. I avoid cattle calls for any warm bodies to serve, but rather I start by asking around to our staff and other people I respect for names of people who might be a good fit for us. Once I have names, then I start setting feelers out via facebook messages, email, etc. I have found this to be a good way to go as it gives potential youth workers time to think about their response rather than just an off the cuff response. If we truly want Godly called people in our student ministry, don't underestimate this first step of setting out feelers. Giving perspective youth workers time to percolate on the idea before hand is both God honoring and wise. When they do sign on the dotted line, both the youth minister and volunteer have a clearer since that this is "of God".

I have to confess something here before I go any further. I go into the process of recruiting volunteers with a touch of fear. Probably similar to my gator hunting brethren when they set out to hunt. We have such an amazing team and our effectiveness as a student ministry is largely contingent on the quality of the adults serving. In the flesh, I am scared of screwing it up. That is why for me, recruiting volunteers is largely a prayer exercise. Praying for God to lead to the right people, praying through the process, praying for wisdom, praying for his intervention. It is only through prayer that we can build a healthy team.