Decide to weather some storms. Expect ministry to be messy, hard, and even a little hellish some days. It might even be like that for a season if you stay long enough. Know going into any context that the grass is not greener anywhere else, and there is no perfect shelter from ministry storms. Some days, all you can do is bunker down, remind yourself you knew these days would come, and pray for strength. Every—yup, every—long-term youth pastor has done this.

Learn to deal with criticism. Find ways to respond, listen to, and even learn from your critics. Learn to sort through the emotion to find the grain of truth in some of it. Seek it from those you trust. Flat out ignore it from the foolish. It’s an art you must master if you’re going to have longevity.

Be a team player. This means you champion ideas that are not your own. You lead the church from your backseat role, leading up when you can. Humbly serve others and earn the right to be heard. Sure, champion the cause of youth in your church; just don’t make that your only agenda. Longevity is not compatible with a lone-ranger mindset.

Equip, encourage, and empower your volunteers. The quickest way to short-term ministry is to become a one-person show. Conversely, those who want to stay for the long haul find help. They ask for others to join their team. They encourage those who do and empower their volunteers to be the best they can be. If you do this, leadership will feel less lonely, and that voice that says you should quit will not be as loud. It won’t go away, but when it has to go through your team first, it gets muffled.

Pick your battles. Some fires aren’t worth putting out, and some hills aren’t worth dying on. Don’t chase down every source of gossip or feel the need to reconcile everyone’s contrary opinions. Just love God and serve people—in that order. When you humbly have your priorities straight, you don’t quit or get fired over stupid stuff. Sometimes the best gift you can give your ministry is to let some stuff die. Longevity requires you to know what’s worth saving and when to have the funeral.

Check your credibility bank account before making big decisions. What I mean is that everyone has a relational bank account. Some decisions you make add credibility to it, and some will cost you. Canceling the church’s sacred cow midweek meeting will cost you dearly. If you don’t have the bank account for that credibility check, don’t write it, or you’ll become a short-term statistic. The larger the decision and the number of people it will impact, the more you have to consider the cost. Yes, I know you can’t please everyone, but people who stay for the long haul think about the consequences of their decisions and who they’re going to upset or please before they make the call. It might still need to happen, but maybe another, more senior leader should be the one writing the credibility check or co-signing with you. Perhaps this is part of what Jesus meant when he told his disciples to be innocent as doves and shrewd as serpents.

Take time off and take care of you. Have a life outside of ministry. Vacation with your family or friends. Get away and think and pray and play and laugh with people you don’t have to pastor. Just do anything and everything it takes to remain healthy yourself and to keep your ministry from being your God. It is for God. It is not God. Make sure you remind yourself often.

But, if I look at my career in youth ministry, I really see God’s hand in it, even though I haven’t been at the same church for twenty years. I’ve never felt like I wasn’t walking the path God had for me, and I honestly believe that my longevity in the ministry has actually come from some of these transitions to different churches.

Figure out your strengths and focus on them while minimizing your weaknesses. I’m really good at a few things. Some other areas I struggle in. If I constantly felt like I needed to be better at those things, or if others consistently told me I had to grow in those areas, it would be hard. I try to make sure people know what I’m good at and do those things a lot. But I don’t neglect my weaknesses; I just find people who are strong in those areas and get their help.

Boundaries. Early on I realized that if I didn’t have solid boundaries, I would be a workaholic and likely burn out. I got my start in youth ministry working at a camp where we were on for the whole summer. That was a tough way to do ministry, but it taught me that I needed to find time to be off and that I couldn’t say yes to everything.

Time away. This is similar to boundaries, I guess. I have to make sure I take care of myself by regularly getting away. My senior pastor likes to say that if we don’t use all our vacation and study leave, we are sinning. I don’t fully agree with that theologically, but on a practical level, I do. I need to leave and recharge so when I’m back, I’m fresh.

Choose family/life/friends over ministry. Not everyone will agree with me here, but it works for me. As much as I possibly can, I choose to honor my commitment to my family and friends while maintaining a separation between work and life. I’ve just found that I need to build into the most important relationships I have, which are with my wife and kids and the people who build into me, which are my friends.

Have fun. A few years back I realized I wasn’t enjoying my job very much. I analyzed it and saw that I was doing so much of the administrative and mundane tasks of ministry that I was missing out on being with students. So I made sure that summer to get to as many of our summer camps and missions trips as I could.

Be strategic. You may be like me and hate all-nighters. Hopefully when you get older, you have younger staff who can run them. But make sure you are there for a good chunk. Maximize your opportunities to see and be with students. I like to say there is no value added to my job to ever be at the second half of a football game. I see everyone in the first half. I watch the band, dance team, and cheerleaders at halftime, and then I bail to go on a date with my wife.

Accountability. It’s too easy to be lazy, do something wrong, or get yourself in trouble if people trust you because of your longevity. Have people who ask you tough questions and grill you. It’ll help you grow too.

Love Jesus. So often in the midst of doing ministry, we forget about the reason we are involved in the first place. Just recently someone asked me how much time I was spending with the Lord. I was totally convicted and changed some patterns in my life so I can be more focused on my Bible and on prayer.

Keep relationships with students. It used to be that when they graduated you couldn’t stay as connected to them, but social media and cell phones have changed all that. This helps me see how my time with students fits into the context of their whole lives.

Learn to Fail. I think this is something I’ve gotten better at with age. I can best equate it to a pro skateboarder. Those guys take a lot of falls, but they have figured out how to fall in the right way. They land as safely as they can and are able to get back up and keep going. Early in ministry I didn’t know how to fall well. I’ve since learned a few tricks.

Make a list of the reasons longevity is valuable. Pull it out and read it from time to time.

Get over yourself. You are not God’s secret weapon or only option.

Ruthlessly develop intimacy with Jesus. Only when you are deeply connected with Jesus will you be able to set aside your ego and weather the temptations to move on.

Remind yourself regularly that your calling does not come from people but from God.

Decide how you will measure your success. Bad measures of success are big programs, lots of ego strokes, buzz, impressive numbers. Good measures of success are the faith examples of former teenagers when they’re in their twenties or thirties—and only longevity allows you to really see that.

Consider the cost to your church, the teenagers you serve, your family, and your own soul of constantly looking over the fence for something better.

Eschew power. Power corrupts your calling and falsely inflates your sense of importance.

Value faithfulness over influence.

Cultivate a life outside of youth ministry.

Be ruthless about establishing and honoring a sustainable rhythm of silence and solitude.

That list is a big mouthful to swallow. There’s some good stuff there, and I believe every single one of them to be true. But let me narrow it down a bit. And I’ll do so by making a potential overstatement (because I always do that!): I’ve never met a full-time paid youth worker who’s stayed in the same church for more than a dozen years who wasn’t humble.

Arrogance is the greatest enemy of longevity. It’s not that every youth worker who changes jobs is arrogant, but I sure have met my share of youth workers who move because they think they’re too good for their churches (or that their churches aren’t good enough for them).

Frankly, if you’re arrogant, you probably won’t even be able to conceive the value of longevity, and you probably didn’t make it this far in the post. But those humble, grounded, steadfast youth workers—ah, they might not be flashy; but, then, that’s a good thing.

Consider this, from Psalm 25:9: He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.

Or, from the MYWV (Marko’s Youth Worker Version, that is): He guides the humble youth worker, and teaches them to stay.

As we unpacked that, he talked about the danger of wrapping up my identity with my vocation and the practical implications for that when things went well in ministry and when things didn’t go well. His rant stuck with me. If I don’t see a burning bush or get suddenly blinded by Jesus, then “calling” is probably not the right description for a job hunt.

That little exchange changed my view on working in the church for the next ten years. We over-spiritualize the whole work/life relationship. It’s a job with a task, and we are professionals hired to fill a role. No offense, but your ministry gig is just that—a gig. That doesn’t mean you love it any less. That doesn’t lessen your significance in the ministry. But it does mean that it’s just a job, and you shouldn’t make it something that it isn’t. It’s what you do, not who you are.

So how do I know when it’s time to leave? Here are a few criteria I’ve used in helping others through this process.

Are you still having fun? Working with teenagers in a church and dealing with all of the ancillary stuff is hard work. And if you aren’t having fun anymore, it’s time to move on. That doesn’t mean every minute has to be filled with games. But it does mean that there is a tipping point between joyfully doing the stuff you don’t like that goes along with the job and looking at your calendar and only seeing things you dream. If you don’t like what you are doing and where you are working, you should quit.

Is this just a valley? I spent eighteen months as the solo pastor at a church after the other two pastors quit suddenly. I know valleys. Those eighteen months were survivable because I knew it was just a valley and we’d be okay when we popped out the other side. During those eighteen months of weddings, funerals, pulpit supply, and endless elder meetings, I gained a new appreciation for the role of the senior pastor. On top of that, when we came out of the valley, the joy was that much greater.

Do you love the staff? I was always jealous of the teams I saw at the big leadership events. They seemed to love each other and want to hang out all the time. I don’t know if that’s the model for ministering together we should strive for. But I do know that you should love doing life with the people you work with.

Do you still love the people? There’s a difference between having healthy boundaries between your ministry life and your personal life and just plain not liking the people in your ministry. If you don’t legitimately like the people in your community, then it’s probably time for you to do something else.

Are you there because of fear? I think a lot of people stay too long in vocational ministry because they are afraid that they can’t do anything else. I’ll let you in on a little secret. You can be a youth worker without being an employee of the church! Never stay at a job because the inconvenience of looking for work is worse than staying at a job you hate.

At the end of the day, there isn’t a formula for knowing when it’s time to double down or time to get out of town. But I’ve learned that there is great value in asking your spouse, your close friends, and a couple other advisers periodically.

How are your heart and soul? I work at a church that I love. I love my staff, the students, their families, and the whole community. I wake up in the morning thinking about the church and am really excited about all the possibilities. Most of the time I feel like I am valued. I worked at a church once where I didn’t feel that way. That was hard. I think self-evaluation of how you are doing at your soul is a huge step. If you feel like you are at a place that nurtures and cares for it, then you are in a good place. If the opposite is true, then you might want to consider a transition.

How are you compensated? I mean way more than money, but I’ll start by talking about strict finances. Do you get paid enough to live on? Are you able to make ends meet and not eat noodles every night? Does the church have a plan for how you might be compensated better during life transitions or milestones? Often in our world, churches don’t take care of us differently when we get married, have kids, or graduate. This is especially true in today’s tight economy. But this is a long-term question you will have to wrestle with. It may be that you are compensated fairly, and I don’t think money should be at the top of your list when it comes to transitions, but it is a factor.

Is there opportunity for growth? This sounds way more like a business question than a church question, but I think it’s still worth asking. If you’ve been in your job for a while and do it well, is there any opportunity to take on more leadership and responsibilities? In many cases, the answer is yes, and you could see yourself sticking around for a long time because there are places you can move into as your life changes. I’ve moved into more of a leader of leaders role as I’ve gotten older and been around longer. It’s a good place for me. If you are in a role that will likely never change and you feel already like you are butting up against a ceiling, you might want to consider a transition.

What happens when you graduate from school? I’m a huge proponent of education. Graduation is a natural time of transition. I left a church after I graduated from seminary. It was a great transition, and everyone celebrated with me. It may be that you are more qualified for a different role after graduation and doors are opening to you. Or you might find that your church wants to move you into something else or increase your salary.

Are you done? This is a simple yet profound question. The hardest year of ministry for me is always the fifth year. It is the year after the first group of students I started with as ninth graders graduate. We are not supposed to have favorites, but in general, that first class I spent four years with will always be mine. So the year after they graduate is a difficult year. I miss them a ton. At one church, I was done in my fifth year but stuck around for two more. All of us will get to a point where we recognize that we know we are finished with our role. But many of us like paychecks and hate transition and just stick around because we are too scared to follow God somewhere else.
One thing I really like about the Slant 33 blog is that you can read two other people’s thoughts here about transitions. Getting multiple opinions is probably really helpful. All situations are different. My last bit of advice is that you have to weigh all factors before making any decision. Focusing too much on any one factor will probably lead you to make the wrong decision. I did that once. I decided a location I wanted to live and a beach I wanted to spend a lot of time at. My blinders came up, and I didn’t weigh all the factors. Great beach, wrong church.