How to Keep Volunteers and Win Committed Helpers for Your Organization

Volunteering is in crisis. Although it was just honored once again at Bellevue Palace in Berlin, the official residence of the German president, it has declined everywhere. Ask the THW (Germany’s Federal Agency for Technical Relief), the handball club or the volunteer fire department, and everywhere they are desperately looking for committed people, for people who pitch in voluntarily, for people who step up for the honor of it. In short: volunteers.

It’s no different in youth ministry and church. When you listen to the leaders in youth ministry and in local churches who are searching for new structures and ideas for their work, almost without exception they name a lack of volunteers as the cause, often disguised as a decline in commitment among the people who are actually there as volunteers.

Of course there are good reasons why many volunteers have pulled back. The reasons are varied and certainly individual, too. But some of the causes of the decline, and of why it is so urgent to win volunteers (back) for youth ministry, apply everywhere alike. Below I outline six of these reasons:

1. School’s claim on teenagers’ time has increased significantly (time argument). Needed by society and (therefore) wanted by politicians, school in Germany today is no longer just the place for lessons but also the (equally) mandatory place where children and teenagers spend the second half of the day.
2. School is often the number one priority in teenagers’ lives (psychological argument), as if school were a full-time job for teenagers, the way jobs are for adults. Students are busy with “school stuff” around 38.5 hours a week, as a survey by UNICEF and Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk (the German Children’s Fund) found (in German). With homework, exam prep and presentations, but also tutoring, study groups and the worries that come from pressure to perform, “school” has turned into a psychological force that, for many teenagers, shapes all or much of their lives.
3. Demographic change is taking hold. The “baby boomers” are retiring in this decade. In Germany, school classes, some with more than 40 children, were already getting gradually smaller again in the 1970s. The same development is now shrinking the number of active people in our society, and with it the number of volunteers: the baby boomers are beginning to retire.
4. Family life has gained importance, both for today’s generation of dads and moms, who want to be more present at home as parents themselves (and are therefore also less available for volunteering), and for children and teenagers, who want to spend more free time at home instead of depending on Christian youth ministry as a “second home,” through which they would automatically turn into very reliable volunteers.
5. The digital society of endless options, where anything goes at any time, produces exhausted people. The need for rest is high, especially among younger people. Hardly anyone from the older generations can grasp this; after all, “we worked a lot harder back then than you do today.” But the never-ending input that has to be processed in an online society of endless options, and, yes, the temptations of an anything-goes lifestyle, really do wear people out more heavily than the efforts in the lives of earlier generations did.
6. The great mission of “saving people (from hell)” no longer exists. It’s certainly not a motive at the handball club, but in many Christian youth groups, congregations and churches, this motive released additional strength for many years and mobilized committed people to volunteer “to save people,” no matter how strong the urge to stay on the couch. Theology has developed and has identified hell, at least theologically, as no longer relevant, so people today no longer feel a spiritual urge to get involved in saving other people.

Six prominent reasons, relevant in basically every context in Germany, why volunteering has declined so sharply. But because investing in youth ministry can’t work at all without volunteers, and, with paid staff declining, would all the more need exactly the opposite trend, we urgently need to think about how to win (back) the volunteers we lost, especially through the COVID measures.

First, though, an example of how it definitely doesn’t work. A few years ago, my astonished ears heard a paid staff member from the broader church world shout the following, loudly complaining: “So now they want me to oversee this particular project, and they won’t even give me a team of volunteers. Now I’m supposed to find them completely on my own. As if I had the patience for that. They must be out of their minds!”

I’m afraid that person is probably still stomping their foot in anger today, because what doesn’t work here? Right: finding just any people to carry out just any tasks that have already been defined and that someone else is responsible for. It’s like casting random extras for a big movie scene, where in the end it doesn’t matter whether it’s me on the left edge of the screen or John Doe on the right, while the lead role shines front and center.

But I see five opportunities to (still) win and keep volunteers for church youth ministry (and elsewhere) instead. They are five principles that I applied successfully myself for as long as I had direct responsibility for children’s and youth ministry, and that I therefore want to pass on as tried and true:

1. Don’t look for volunteers for the work. Look for work for volunteers. Putting this principle into practice isn’t always easy, because of course there are gaps in the day-to-day running of church youth ministry that have to be filled with committed people. And of course you’re also allowed to climb onto a soapbox and shout, “I still need three volunteers for …!” But whoever carries responsibility in youth ministry should, where possible, move away from a principle of having to fill gaps and work instead toward a principle of really seeing people, in order to support their personal development and put their character to good use for the benefit of the youth group. This principle shifts the focus away from what’s missing (“I don’t have any volunteers”) and toward the mission of the youth group or organization (“How can I help you grow?”).
2. Make volunteering appealing as a path to personal growth. Volunteering in youth ministry teaches, almost in passing, quite a few things that preschool, school, home and confirmation class don’t. If I have people in view as potential volunteers for their own sake (see 1.), I can also make volunteering appealing to them as something “you’ll benefit from for the rest of your life.” Self-confidence, the ability to handle conflict, project management, being able to stand in front of a group, leadership, organization, self-worth drawn from being needed, reliability and commitment … Imagine a job applicant at a skilled-trades shop or a company who can show that list of personal qualities. Nowadays it would probably be the businesses competing to hire that potential employee. Volunteering in Christian youth groups (and elsewhere) fosters all of that and much more. Training that aims to build additional skills should go alongside volunteering.
3. Don’t set the bar for volunteering too low. For a while I recruited teenagers again and again, and intensively, to volunteer in the children’s ministry. Before I confirmed anyone’s involvement, I had in-depth one-on-one conversations with each of them. I had a list of requirements: “Will you reliably be there if you become a volunteer? Will you see your work through to the end if you join the team? Will you take part in all the meetings? Are you willing to give and receive feedback?” and so on. The list was long, and not everyone was allowed to get involved as a volunteer afterward. At the same time, though, the teams were more than full and there was no reliability problem whatsoever. Everyone knew they had a demanding job to do, one they had freely said yes to, in full. In the end there were waiting lists for a spot on the team; we simply didn’t have enough camps and events in the children’s ministry (of a regional association) to go around, because volunteers wanted to prove themselves and live up to a standard that they felt right away was being asked of them for the sake of the children and the project. And they gladly devoted themselves to such a higher purpose and rearranged their priorities.
4. Make the vision of your church or organization the volunteer’s own vision. The vision of an individual task in your work should match the overall vision of your church or organization. And each volunteer should be able to connect their individual task in the work with the overall vision of your organization. That vision has to be known, and you have to be able to talk about it. You need to have a conversation with the volunteer about it, to find out whether the volunteer can and wants to connect with your organization’s vision. A vision carries further than a run-of-the-mill volunteer role. And taking part in a vision of your organization that becomes the volunteer’s own motivates people more from within than any admonition to be reliable. As a volunteer at an ICF church (International Christian Fellowship) once put it to me so well: “I’m not pushing boxes around. I’m on the setup team because I’m passionate about seeing people become more like Jesus Christ, live fearlessly and change their surroundings for the better.”
5. Lead your volunteers. And I really mean it: lead your volunteers. Stay in personal contact with your volunteers. Praise them. Give them constructive, appreciative feedback. Take them out for a coffee, a beer, a meal. Go for a walk with them. Ask how they’re doing. Call them. Share something personal about yourself with them, too. Give them gifts, pray for them, keep them in mind, make them your friends, train them, coach them, stand up for them … Lead them.

Youth ministry needs volunteers. If we’re serious about that, those responsible in our youth ministry focus on (potential) volunteers as a target group of the work. Not just as people who carry out tasks. Winning volunteers (back) has become a tough business, especially post-COVID. Every single one you win is a celebration, not something to take for granted. Seen that way, we can also pray about it, look at it spiritually and put it in perspective.