Party With Your Team

Let me tell you a little bit about our team.  We have 15 partners serving on our team.  All are volunteers, I'm the only paid guy.  Our team serves every Sunday night.  Most of the team are our "family group" leaders and then we have a few kitchen queens.  Kitchen queens are the ladies responsible for keeping us fed, they also clean the place up while the Bible study is going on.  They love serving and encouraging students.  Our family group leaders basically are our youth ministers.  There is no way I could do effective youth ministry without the team.  I love our team, they rock!

Saturday evening our youth ministry team got together as a team and hung out around a fire pit.  We ate some great food and enjoyed sitting around the fire and talking and hanging out together.  It was fun to do something as a team without the students there.  A few things come to mind as I think about our team getting together.

• Minister with a team.  If you aren't doing youth ministry in a team setting you are hurting yourself, your family, your church, your students.  Ministry is more fun and effective when accomplished with other believers.
• Express to your team how much you value them and how vital they are to the ministry.
• Offer training to your team.  Utilize e-mail, web sites, podcasts, seminars and books.  
• Encourage your team.  Look for opportunities to encourage them as they encourage students.
• Party with your team.  Look for opportunities to have fun together without any "meeting" involved in the party.
• Pray for your team.  This should be a no brainer.  I pray for our team but I'm thinking it would be good to let them know individually that they are being prayed for.  I know I feel good when someone tells me that they are praying for me or ask for prayer requests.