Book Review: Building Your Volunteer Team: A 30-Day Change Project for Youth Ministry

by Hank Hilliard
In Building Your Volunteer Team: A 30-Day Change Project for Youth Ministry, Mark DeVries and Nate Stratman get right at the heart of one of the most prominent challenges in youth ministry – building a volunteer team. Drawing from their combined 40-plus years of experience, Mark and Nate offer practical tools to equip today’s youth worker for success.
Many youth workers have found themselves languishing in frustration and self-pity because of a lack of volunteers serving in the youth ministry. Because recruiting volunteers can be overwhelming, the youth worker may fall into the temptation of doing it alone. Mark and Nate break down the seemingly overwhelming task of recruiting volunteers into manageable and measurable tasks.
Mark and Nate want your youth ministry to be busting at the seams with quality volunteers. With brutal honesty they dispel the mystery of what it takes to reach this goal – it takes putting in the time and work. In a very practical and detailed manner, they give readers the process and the plan and even guarantee its success. Every task is clearly defined and organized into a 30-day plan. They even include sample recruiting letters, voice mail messages, and links to several helpful online tools that will help you succeed.
New youth workers who lack experience to seasoned veterans who have struggled with recruiting volunteers for years will benefit from going through this project. Even youth workers who have had success in recruiting volunteers can pull valuable insight and nuggets of truth to help them grow and improve.
I have been in youth ministry for nearly 20 years and have successfully recruited and trained hundreds of volunteers – and I cannot wait to add and implement the principles of this 30-day project into my own recruiting process.
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Hank Hilliard is the Director of Youth Ministries at First United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tenn., and serves as a CYMT coach.