I just got back from a youth conference that I will blog about soon and Rick Young (who also MC’d the event) – Middle School Pastor at First Baptist Church Woodstock shared with the youth pastors and leaders about how to last in youth ministry. Rick has been at his church for the past 16 years! Currently the average stay of a youth pastor is anywhere from 18 months to 3 years. We need to change this so here are 1o principles for lasting in youth ministry.

1. Keep Growing – Key: Seek after God in your own life. Read, Pray, Reflect, Listen, and write. If we are growing in our own relationship with the Lord then that will help us when times are tough and when conflicts arise.
2. Get Real – Key: Take a spiritual maturity inventory for your students spiritual condition. Find out if they are: Rebellious, Apathetic, Interested, or Passionate. Once you know you can better program for where they are at as a group and move them from that area to what they need next.
3. Go Wide – Key: Keep sharing the Gospel on the forefront of the youth ministry. Keep in mind that you never know when God’s spirit will work in a student’s life and it could be there time to accept Christ. It’s our job to share the Gospel and let God do His thing.
4. Grow Deep – Key: Challenge your students to continually grow spiritually. Col. 1:10 says, “And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God”. Don’t just leave it at accepting Christ but work towards also growing them deep.
5. No More Outsourcing – Key: Encourage and challenge parents to be involved with their student’s spiritual development. I just wrote about Creating A Parent Advisory Team which is one way to start getting parents involved. Rick simply said that you start with a couple of parents and challenge them to find at least 1 new parent that could help by the time the school year was done. This will also help you get more involved and you will need to have some type of process for adding them to your team, but this can greatly help your youth ministry and plus it’s their parents that are getting involved with their youth which is Biblical.
6. Build on Values Not Fads – Key: Build a healthy youth ministry. Base your youth ministry from Biblical principles and it will go much better then the latest hottest thing out there.
7. Build a Team – Key: You CAN NOT do it on your own! The great thing about a team is that you have different personalities of leaders for different personalities of students. Plus your focus needs to be on your message and overall vision of the youth ministry and if you are bogged down with what to do for set up and tear down and snacks and powerpoint stuff and music and games – then you are going to not be as excited and focused as you could be.
8. Programs with a Purpose – Key: Don’t just have programs just to have them, have a purpose behind them. Maybe you need to evaluate why you do what you do and being the new year it’s a great time to evaluate. Don’t make your programs all the same but have different reasons or purposes for each of them. Starting from entry level to discipleship level.
9. Have Fun – Key: Have fun with the students and the youth ministry. If you’re not having fun you are probably bogged down with too many administrative things that someone else could be helping you with. It’s good for the students to see you and your team having fun together. It makes the meeting time fun for them too.
10. Time – Key: Building a healthy youth ministry takes time. So that’s why you need to work towards staying in the youth ministry because it will take time for it to form and grow and I would even say that after 3 years you finally start feeling like you are making an impact so that’s why it’s critical to stay and grow that youth ministry God has you in charge of.

There is also an ebook that you can download of top 14 youth ministry leaders and what they say about lasting in youth ministry which may be helpful to you: Click Here

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