3 Steps To Keep Your Ministers

Along with the warm weather comes a transition to what you do.  Even if you don’t break for the summer the schedule becomes a little more relaxed because you need time to reflect and review so that next fall can be better than ever.  A part of the transitioning process is asking the question, “Will you be back.” to your team.  It’s a nerve racking question, even if you are confident that your ministry is filled with youth ministry lifers.  It’s nerve racking because life happens and you can never be sure.
While there are many things we can do to turn away our ministers, it’s more important to focus on what we can do to ensure that they’ll stick it out, grow with the program and walk with you for the long run.  Now, there is no full proof way of keeping them because again life happens; however, here are three steps every leader should take when it comes to keeping ministers:

1. Persistent Communication – Under communicating is worst than over communicating.  Too many times we expect our volunteers to read our minds and make assumptions about the way we do things.  The end result is always disappointment.  Be persistent to be sure that everyone is on the same page.  People might get annoyed but they’ll appreciate the fact that you care that they know what you want them to know.
2. Open Gratitude – No one knows you are gracious for what they do if you never tell them.  If you don’t thank your team chances are they’ll think you don’t care about them.  One of the hardest; yet, most important things we need to do is love on our ministers.  Let them know that they are worth it.
3. Raised Expectations – We love them; therefore, we don’t want them to fail.  But, in reality if we truly loved our ministers we would push them to go to great lengths to bring teens to Christ.  If you have their trust and love you should set the bar high.  If you set it too low, it will seem as if you don’t trust them to do the hard stuff.

Granted you can go too far with each of these steps and become a little overbearing.  However, build and grow these steps and watch your ministry team build and grow.

What other practices do you use to keep your team for the long haul?