For what it’s worth, my own perception has ALWAYS been that too many youth ministers see their youth work as a transitional stage toward some other call. This appears to my eyes to be nothing new at all.
I also have always had the perception that this is not a good thing.

I might add life stage. Nearly every point you mentioned here resonates solidly with me, a young youth worker. My temptation to move on, though predicated by nearly all of those factors, has to do with life stage. At 25 and single youth ministry can be a difficult place. I hope to have a family some day and right now my job doesn’t allow for me to pursue that. A job with less nights and weekends looks attractive, a greener pasture, if you will. I have no plans to “depart” right now, but there are a lot of reasons why it would make sense to do so.
Leading from the second chair is just difficult. I don’t think I need to go into detail with that but sometimes it is painstaking trying to help a church move forward when the leadership is lacking.

Is moving from youth ministry to church planting necessarily mean you are leaving youth ministry behind. At least in my reformed tradition, the youth ministry has always seemed like a separate wing of the church, and not the real church. I wonder if our ecclesiology is part of the reason why so many young people grow up and leave the church. I think we need to do more to incorporate our youth into the real life of the church. I would be interested to see if some are leaving traditional youth ministry positions to form a new church that better serves our youth

I agree with Mark @ 1. There’s always been a tendency to view youth ministry as a kind of stepping stone or understudy role used to prepare for “Real Ministry (TM)”.

Travis,
There is some tendency to view it as a stepping stone no doubt. But there is also always movement of people within different types of ministry.
Change is not necessarily bad.

I’m seeing a couple of different trends that might be contributing to this.
For one, in my experience at Seminary it felt like anyone who was getting a Master of Divinity felt like going into youth ministry wouldn’t be a good use of their gifts– and when Youth Ministry is relegated to gross-out games and “baby sitting”, I don’t blame them.
Secondly, I’ve noticed church’s slashing youth budgets and youth pastor salaries. I know more than a few churches who used to have seminary trained pastors running their youth ministry, and now they’ve decided they can pay a kid out of college half as much to do the same job. Those same college kids don’t always have the maturity and skills to sustain long term ministry; and thus youthworkers start burning out more.

As someone who left youth ministry after about 10 years, and has been in a preaching role at a smaller, more mission-minded church for about a year, I can tell you that this post rings pretty true to my experience. Thanks for posting it here.
AE

We’re in a recession. Youth ministers almost universally get paid less than pastors, don’t they?

I am smack dab in the middle of points 1,2, and 3. I love my church and the leadership. And, I’m not done with youth ministry yet. But, I’ve come up against the fact that churches are very willing to move in all kinds of directions as long as youth ministry and children’s ministry stays attractional, traditionally small-group based, and stuck to the teacher-learner model of teaching. As of now, I’ve decided to make a change and am looking for what God has for me next. The problem is that every other church is expecting to hire a youth worker to do the same things mentioned above. I think I might have to go get a job and do youth ministry in a smaller missional church to really be able to shape what I’m being called to do in ministry. Would love any leads or ideas!

I believe that a large reason we are seeing more people leaving youth ministry has to do with the decline in support from the church. I am currently serving as a youth director at a church with around 1,000 members and recently received a 20% pay cut. Likewise i have seen many church’s in my area (Pacific NW) cut their youth positions down to 50% or combine them with children’s ministry.
All of these decisions made by the church lead to youth directors & pastors feeling very unsupported. As a youth director you are constantly faced with criticism as you work with people’s children and i believe that often when you add all of these factors up, along with low pay, you find yourself questioning whether you could better be used in another ministry.
I believe that Chris is right that we are seeing a decline in youth ministry, however i also believe that there are many of us who are committed to discipling the youth of our church despite being knocked down many times.

I can really identify with #3 and #4.
You left off # 7. Am I making a difference? Can I have greater impact for The Kingdom working primarily with adults?
Come to think of it I’m also in the middle of # 1. I volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and meet with Youth Pastors from different denominations to pray and converse on a monthly basis to express my differing theological framework.

I resonate with 2
Most churches want a large youth ministry because it attracts/keeps adults in the body. they are not as concerned with the health of the youth ministry or the teens themselves as they are having exciting programs. this facilitates the attractional model.
Most youth ministers genuinely care about the students themselves and are to an extent repelled by the attractional model. The attractional model can be the very thing that does eventual damage to the student’s long-term spiritual growth. The emphasis on numbers, programs, energy, excitement, and “relating” to youth culture drives up the numbers, but can very easily damage the student’s relationsip to the church by creating false expectations. This naturally leads to the number one problem in youth ministry: the high church-drop-out rate once students graduate from the youth ministry. The high attractional model then, if it is not focused on the students’ ultimate needs, does damage to the students.
This is the friction: youth ministers forced into a mold they didn’t sign up for. They can only fit for so long before dropping out. Often, the split is so acrimonious that the scarred youth pastor wants little (if anything) to do with the church in the future.
Youth ministry needs to be reframed to address the students’ long term spiritual growth.

I was thinking today about what I would are themes or words that describe my time in youth ministry. “A losing Battle” is the first one that came to my mind. Maybe this is just me because as I looked at the list of reason why YP are leaving for other areas of ministry or the profession all together I didn’t see anyone say anything about our culture. I just feel that youth ministry (and maybe its just my context) is losing a battle with culture…its expectations on youth, all the oppurtunities, sports teams, music competitions, and other activities that crowd out the voice of the Lord. I constantly run up against families sacrificing their commitment to the church for other elements of their life. I have to believe on some level this is causing some of the trends that this blog suggests are happening. Its got to wear on people.

Matt K. is correct. The seminary that I attended didn’t have many people wanting to do youth ministry after they graduated although many of us did it while we where enrolled. In fact, I didn’t want to do it either, but that is exactly what God called me to do. I am approaching my three year anniversary at the church and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Although, as some other folks mentioned, lack of raises, cut in pay, or a cut in budget don’t help encourage folks to stay in youth ministry. For some reason many seminaries unwittingly reinforce the mindset that a youth pastor doesn’t have to have a heart and head for God and students. There is much to be said for longevity in a ministry setting be it youth or something else…

I am in my upper 40′s and have always had the impression that youth ministry is viewed as a stepping stone. During my four years of high school (in the mid to late 70′s), I had four separate youth pastors due primarily to the stepping stone reason. I suspect other reasons provided do have substance. There does seem to be a need for a more comprehensive theology that encompasses all ages.

Then there are the churches that cannot be pleased and continually force youth pastors (as well as other pastors) out. A person can only take that so many times before changing to ministry outside of churches.

I am a YP in a church that began 20 years ago by a “legendary” Youth Pastor who departed for the greener pastures of Lead Pastor in our church. Now, “Here’s what you need to do” is a familiar phrase I hear during our weekly meetings. “This worked for me in the 80′s, when my youth ministry reached national recognition.” We might add “puppet-master syndrome” to the list of reasons for YP departures. With more and more former youth pastors taking over churches, there will be temptation to manage their own current YP’s on how to do ministry the right way. As more former YP’s move to greener pastures, my hope is that we allow our own YP’s to be creative, to have an equal voice in the leadership of the church, and resist the “numbers-driven” pressures and unreasonable expectations.
For all the reasons mentioned in this thread, I can testify as a YP that the temptation to flee YM is always before me. A friend once told me that if I find myself in a church where there is weak leadership, blurred church vision, and/or faulty doctrine, then there are three typical outcomes: 1. the “frog in the kettle” – (going along with things, trying to change them but in the process being changed slowly over time); 2. cynical despair; and, 3. the YP exocus (sometimes leaving with burn-out or church split). None of these 3 options are very good, so pick your poison. Not to sound overly grim, but perhaps many YP’s are not willing to have their convictions changed thru attrition, nor are they interested in becoming desperately cynical. So, they opt for the bail-out.

I wholly resound with this post. I’m there right now. I was never really interested in youth ministry, but always in serving my church. For 6 years I’ve been our associate, hired within the church with a ministry background, but 4 years of service as a volunteer as I did other work.
As I said, I’m in that struggle right now. I love our youth, love teaching and working with people who truly are working on their relationship with God and excited about it, yet, frustrated by parents spiritual immaturity, fundamentalist theology or lack of apparent commitment to the church. I am tired of sorry vision statements & stale programming & activities with little overall purpose or pace within the overall direction of the churches mission. I do not want to do this all over again at another church. My wife is a high school teacher (more secure and better pay than I) & we have 2 small kids, which is not easy to keep balanced in youth ministry.
Do I continue through frustration & provide some leadership from the second chair while our church gains some focus within the ministry.
Do I consider a call to another church in a different leadership position?
Do I plant a new work in our community to reach non religious people?
Need more prayer & fasting…

Perhaps we need to rethink the whole idea of following cultural trends by isolating our youth into a separate category, thus contributing to the elongation of the awkward, neither child, nor adult period that we call adolesence.
Give the youth a real place, with real decision-making and leadership responsibility in the church. Paul told the young Timothy to “dispise not his youth…and to be an example for the believers” (both old and young).
My observation is that young men and women who have a lot of adult interaction and influence as opposed to peer interaction embrace adulthood more quickly, more gracefully and grow up to become more mature and better adujusted adults. I am a junior high day school teacher and I regularly have opportunities to observe the difference in maturity level between home schooled children and children who have had a steady diet of peer dominated classroom instruction from pre-school on.
If I were currently a youth minister, I would recruit adult mentors and get my youth paired up one-on-one and in small groups with them. I would do my best to get a better mix of young adults and older adults participating in the regular gahterings of the youth, both worship and social events. And as mentiioned above I would do my best to involve youth in service days, outreaches and retreats that in the past have been seen as exclusively either adult or youth activities. Instead of separte activities, integrate them. Also, I would find a way to allow some of the more mature youth to participate in the decision-making board of the church, along with the youth pastor.

I for one would be happy to remain in children and youth ministry ?forever? in the right situation. But as I have learned about leadership, church culture and our wider cultural context, I don?t see how I can build the kind of children and youth ministry I envision from my position as Director of Children and Youth Ministries. Too much change is needed in our congregation?s culture, and at least as I understand it, you can?t lead cultural change from the second (or third or fourth) chair.
I?m now beginning a process of looking into the possibility of becoming an ordained pastor, mostly because I hope I am listening to God, but motivated by the fact that effective children and youth ministry happens in the context of a congregation that is together intentional about making it happen. As I understand it, the only place to catalyze that kind of intentional context is from up front, from the first chair.

I have been a youth pastor 13 years now and I have seen many of my friends and colleagues in youth ministry leave to either pursue a “next-level ministry” like a lead pastor or worship leader or go into a field not even closely related to youth ministry or the Church like business, sales, etc. I’ve worked with youth leaders who burn out too quickly and never come back for various reasons from personal and family to frustrations with the church. From my graduating class of youth ministry majors, I believe I am one of about a dozen that are still in youth ministry. Some youth pastors I feel leave to help better provide for their families. The solution to helping the burnout rate is a tough one! I think churches really need to support the youth pastors by providing strong volunteer leadership, parental support, time to rest and study, and strong encouragement into an integrated vision of the church as a whole, not just a separate entity in and of itself, but respected throughout. I feel many youth leaders become too busy and miss the importance of their own personal spiritual development, over time this causes them to burnout and unable to give themselves fully to their calling. I am concerned about the state of youth ministry personally and pray that more will see that the harvest is ready…but the workers are few.