4 Ways to Equip Volunteers to Lead Kids to Christ

Leading kids to Christ is one of the best parts about being in Children’s Ministry. There’s nothing like walking alongside a child as they move closer to this milestone on their spiritual journey. As much as I love this part of my job, I don’t get to do it as much as I used to starting out. This is because I want to equip our volunteers to know how to lead a child to Christ. I don’t want them dependant on me whenever one of their kids is ready to follow Christ. I want them to know what to do and feel empowered to do it.

So how do you go about equipping and empowering volunteers to lead kids to Christ without you? Here’s four ways:

1. Outline the process
The first step is to figure out HOW you want volunteers to lead kids to Christ. Some of your more seasoned leaders already know what to do and have a good system in place to do it. But most don’t. Make time to write out how you want your team to help kids take this step in their relationship with God. Formalize it as part of your policies. I’ll talk more about what our steps are right now at High Desert Church but here’s a brief overview:

• Child talks with one of our leaders using our “New Believer in Christ” booklet.
• If the leader feels the child is ready they will wait till their parents arrive.
• The leader will let parents know and offer to pray with them if they would like.
• If the child receives Christ we mail out info about our Kids Baptism Class.

We’ve even put this in our policy handbook and talk about it in our volunteer orientation. Nobody comes on our team without hearing how to lead a child to Jesus.

2. Find or create tools to help
It’s always a good idea to have a few resources to help your leaders. I mentioned our policy handbook but that’s not all we provide. We’ve created a booklet to help volunteers visually walk through the process with kids. There’s a spiritual birth certificate our leaders fill out when kids accept Christ. There’s also a decision card and follow-up letters and tools we send home to parents to help them help their kids. You don’t have to create everything from scratch. There are lots of churches and companies who have done a great job here. Search them out online and get what you need.

Click here if you’d like digital copies of our free resources.

3. Provide training
Tools and resources are great. But you’ve also gotta make the time to walk your leaders through the process, answer questions, and get their feedback. One way we do this at HDC is through our volunteer orientation and monthly training videos. Here’s one we recently did on how to lead a child to Christ (click here if you can’t view the video):

4. Follow-up
Schedule times to evaluate how these steps are being lived out in your ministry. Gather some of your core volunteers and get their honest feedback. Ask them what is working, what’s not, and what’s missing. Their in-the-trenches perspective will help you fine-tune your process to lead kids into God’s family.

Having a ministry with volunteers who can confidentially lead a child to Christ without you “holding their hand” is going to set your team up for success. Figure out what you want them to do, give them tools and training to help, and periodically check-in to see how they’re doing. That’s how world-changers are born.