Children and Youth Area Coordinator

Children and Youth Area Coordinator The Horizon Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church seeks a Children and Youth Area Coordinator. Area Coordinators will be tasked with coordinating connections and serving as support for collective plans for children, youth, families, and workers. This includes service days, learning days, social events, summer camp, and more. We recognize that the size of our conference is quite large and requires support at a more local level.

Knowing this, we are looking for capable individuals who are connected with other United Methodist Churches in their area and want to continue developing together a healthy network that offers mentorship and support for those in their area so that every director, new or seasoned, is within one hour of a conference children or youth worker that can provide support and care, particularly for leaders serving smaller, rural, and town and country churches.

Primary Responsibilities:

Relational Build relational connections within the area and across conferences through engagement with Conference-utilized communication streams, including social media groups.

Connect with every children’s and youth director yearly within your area, focusing on 25 churches that have youth and children that are still disconnected from the work of the  a feedback loop for emerging trends, needs, and situations as they arise in the ministry of the church in the area you serve.

Build a leadership team from across the region to support/multiply relational connections.

Meet regularly with this team.

Inspire and encourage churches to connect to host something together that benefits workers, parents, youth, children, and communities.

Attend gatherings of area coordinators for collaboration, training, and long-term visioning with the Director of Children and Youth Empowerment.

Tasks Cultivate an environment that supports innovative ideation and execution, reinforces healthy feedback, and builds confidence and enthusiasm for regional and conference-level programming.

Plan and execute a gathering four times per year for children’s and/or youth ministry leaders to provide: relational opportunities, training of best practices for the Conference, program support for children’s ministry leaders.

This includes both the contextual and the system events in your area:

Each semester, plan a Service Day where students can learn about a local opportunity to share or a Learning Day for Parents/Pastors/Directors/Workers can learn how best to move forward on a topic based on expert sharing.

Execute one conference-wide event per year. Gather for meal, coffee, etc. as needed for the connection of your area.

Enthusiastically support Conference level children’s and youth ministry events and programming through timely communication, collaborative planning, supportive presence, and involvement at the events.

Support new children’s and youth ministry leaders within the area and help onboard them to the resources and connection available as well as communicate the Conference goals and vision.

Commit to particular events for the conference, depending on availability, with an expectation of three below per year:

Annual Conference support as chaperones for youth (or chaperones and representatives of your church)
Participation as needed in other area events across the conference as available

Summer Camp volunteer for at least one week Participate in the collective, collaborative mission trip Skills Needed:

Communication Maintain communication across assigned areas and with conference.

Recognize when pastoral support is required and ensure care is taken.

Reach out to the churches in your area via email, phone, or visits to confirm they know we offer resources and open the conversation of how we…