Comments on Purpose Driven Reading by Robin Barfield

Recruitment Thought & Question

danielarmond — 2025-02-13 11:13:46 UTC

I found it helpful to be reminded of the different roles that church family can play within Youth and Kids Ministry - it is not all about being a leader in the room. So often it's easy to become fixated on needing to meet ratios or having enough leaders for programmes to run, that I forget the other ways in which people can serve e.g. prayer and resources. This is a helpful challenge, particularly in light of the question of whether we look for enough leaders to survive or enough to thrive. Thriving will involve leaders in various different roles.

Also, I really liked the diagram on page 300 - I would want to completely change the content, but I thought it was a helpful way of encouraging investment from the team.

A question - with so many differing roles in churches that need to be filled, how have you seen recruitment done well where people are spread out across ministries and there's not one ministry area that suffers because another gets lots of people? OR where it's not the same people doing everything?

Translating to a UK context

adelepye — 2025-02-14 15:36:49 UTC

I loved lots of the material on how to recruit well, and the process. When we translate it to the UK setting we can probably see lots of things ticked off with an official safer recruitment process, but Saddleback reminded me it's so much more. We don't want to just do the safeguarding paperwork, but blend it well with the wisdom of this process too.

Thoughts and comments on this weeks reading

2025-02-16 20:07:29 UTC

I found these two chapters very helpful and encouraging. I'm so pleased that he emphasised the important of callings helpers- leaders not volunteers. I really try to do this with our leaders because I want to avoid an us and them attitude - 'paid staff' and 'volunteers'.

I also found it very helpful to think about the other ways that people can support the youth ministry. I think this is something that I have really neglected and haven't invested much time in- especially having a youth prayer ministry team praying for the ministry.

I understand what he was saying about our ultimate goal being to having hands on leaders. But I think the suggestion that we should be seeking to move where possible our leaders from the 'behind the scenes' roles (e.g. resourcing and praying teams) to hands on leaders actually slightly diminishes these roles and actually they should be seen as just as important as the hands on roles.

I thought the way he distinguished between 'programme directed leaders' and 'self-directed leaders' was very helpful indeed. Getting leaders to move from being program directed to self-directed leaders is something I really really want to work on and again know this is an area of ministry at I have not invested enough time in.

My question is: can you have too many 'hands on leaders' on your team? I am blessed with quite a well resourced team to the point that some of my leaders often feel like they are just standing around and aren't actually needed. However I want to have too many leaders because I want them to have time to just get alongside the young people and chat with them. I know that part of this is ensuring that the leaders are onboard with the vision for the youth ministry and about training them in this.

Reactions to chapter

2025-02-17 08:36:19 UTC

He had me at…No. I was immediately encouraged by how he quickly addressed no being the right answer to some who may show an interest in CY&F ministry. Being prepared to say no is always the sign of a good leader and i have found for years, a view where people have to allow some because “who am i to deny their ministry” and “well we need the help”.

I also appreciated his approach to monthly team meetings, and trying to control the start without it falling in to a moaning workshop. That is really helpful.

Overall, whilst it felt more like a chapter on NHS leadership for me, his overall approach to what i would term ‘professional volunteering’ was obvious throughout.