In this episode, Nick sits down with one of his best friends, and also, boss, and they discuss volunteer, not only recruiting, but also how to create such a strong volunteer team that volunteers would never choose to leave your team. Be sure to stick around for the surprising strategy that actually keeps volunteers on the team longer!

📊 [FREE] HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE

https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

✅ CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU

https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

SHOW NOTES

Shownotes & Transcripts

https://www.hybridministry.xyz/144

LINKS

EVERYONE’S CALLED TO YOUTH MINISTRY, THEY JUST DON’T KNOW IT YET

https://www.leadertreks.org/product/everyones-called-to-youth-ministry/?srsltid=AfmBOopjL0EcxJ7aqwuXWiyd0z77tkUIsMPqfIA4dgVOHCPIIdNg32GE

//CONNECT WITH DARREN

https://www.facebook.com/darrensutton.mi

https://www.instagram.com/veteranyp/

👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry

Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

--------------

🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉

We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context!

The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe!

https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick

--------------

🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU!

Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products

VIDIQ

https://vidiq.com/hybrid

BEST DYM RESOURCES

https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS

https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100

https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

--------------

🕰️TIMECODES

00:00 Meet My Boss & Friend, Darren Sutton

01:02 35 Years in 35 Seconds

04:10 Shocking Bar Raising Leader Strategy

05:33 What if Leaders Don’t Respond?

07:56 Start Recruiting Leaders from Scratch

19:33 How do you keep good leaders?

21:57 Conducting Leader Debriefs

25:45 A Complete List of Roles

31:20 Final Encouragement

--------------

TRANSCRIPT

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:01 .036)

We've recorded so many podcasts together. I don't even know how I feel like we're supposed to Well, everyone here we are. I am with my boss, Darren Sutton, who has his youth ministry till I die shirt on, which I was wearing yesterday. So I'm glad that we coordinated this. But I wanted to get on here and I've been working for Darren now for five years, two different places.

Darren Sutton (00:04 .982)

Welcome back.

Darren Sutton (00:20 .691)

Thank you.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:29 .72)

And aside from having written a book, I would also say practically speaking, Darren has a lot to say about volunteers. But Darren, first, tell us a brief overview. Distill your 35-year youth ministry journey down to 35 seconds. But why in that did volunteers become such a thing for you?

Darren Sutton (00:53 .484)

Yeah, I don't know if I can say that in 35 seconds, but I will say this. I was pretty much the Lone Ranger youth pastor who would just grab chaperones when I was absolutely desperate for adults to be in the room or whatever. I would have adults lead Bible study classes and go to summer camp with me and the stuff where you know you can't do everything, so you have them there. But I didn't realize the...

extent of needing people to carry the mission forward and to lean into their own calling until I was about maybe 10 years in and we were having our yeah we were having our third baby and my lead volunteer was like I can't do this and you need you need more people you're not doing this right so my wife basically was like listen you're you are

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (01:32 .354)

Did something happen?

Darren Sutton (01:48 .29)

fantastic and you have lots of adult leaders, but you're not equipping them for ministry. You're just having them hold down the pieces that you can't hold down and they have more to offer than that. And you're not, you're not giving them, you know, the runway to do that. And that changed everything. It totally transformed my whole philosophy about why we use volunteers and how we keep them and why that matters.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (01:57 .676)

Mmm. Mmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:03 .98)

Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:16 .982)

Okay, so yeah, so like I would imagine that, you know, average youth pastor listening is like, you know, they have that mentality, right? The volunteers are a necessary like evil, I don't wanna say, you know, but like they just, know they have to have them. There you go. They're a necessary component, but maybe like, maybe they don't even know what to do with them.

Darren Sutton (02:36 .088)

Component. Let's go with component. They're necessary component.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:46 .028)

You know what mean? like that, would imagine maybe some of that was your story too. Like maybe control a little bit, but also like, what do I even do with these guys? So yeah, so how did you, before we dive into kind of the recruiting conversation, how did you mentally release yourself and be able to trust that you could actually hand off like meaningful things to said volunteer?

Darren Sutton (02:53 .294)

You worked for me, you know part of it was control.

Darren Sutton (03:13 .89)

Yeah, great question. This, I mean, you know, this is gonna sound like a no brainer, but 25 years ago it wasn't. I started writing job descriptions and I just sat down and said, okay, if I was handing off deeper parts of this, or if the people who were already serving were gonna own it the way I wanted them to.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:23 .96)

Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:35 .0)

Yeah.

Darren Sutton (03:37 .58)

What did I want that to look like? Like, what did I want them to do? Part of the struggle is that I wasn't recruiting them to anything other than filling the spot and hanging out with kids. And so if I wanted them to be at football games and, you know, choir performances, and if I wanted them to be writing cards to kids who weren't there, and if I wanted them to be reaching out to parents on the regular and all that, I needed to spell that out, and I hadn't done that. And so I was doing all that part, and they were just showing up.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:46 .978)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:01 .261)

Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:05 .622)

Yeah.

Darren Sutton (04:05 .866)

And as soon as I kind of raised the bar and said, here's what I really need you to be doing in this role. If you love Jesus and love students and you want to make an eternal impact, it looks like this. It changed everything. So job descriptions were my number one thing. And again, that sounds a little bit like a no brainer now, I think for a lot of people, but we weren't doing that back then.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:25 .962)

Yeah. So and then they did they did race to the challenge, right? Were you nervous that they wouldn't or couldn't or didn't have the time to or was there any of that?

Darren Sutton (04:31 .902)

yeah. Yeah.

Darren Sutton (04:37 .71)

You know, I don't remember being nervous about it as much as I was just, was at a point in my ministry and in my family life where I was like, they have to do this. You know, so it never dawned on me, I think, and also young and arrogant. Like it never dawned on me that anybody would say, I don't want to do that. And to their credit, nobody did. Like everybody rose to the challenge. And I really think that

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:56 .802)

Sure.

Darren Sutton (05:07 .32)

we sell the body of Christ, not volunteers, they're the body. We sell the body short when we assume that they won't invest more. Give them a chance to show you that, right? And if they do, then you know, like they might be better suited for a different role in your ministry, but this role with the job description as it's written, they're just not go