“I’d really like to hand over my youth ministry. But what do I do if there’s no one who can take it over? All the young adults I’d pinned my hopes on are now busy with other important things.” (Simon)
Handing over your youth ministry? That’s a hard step. You don’t want to let go of your responsibility lightly. You need a successor, but how? At the same time, you may be unsure how to go about the whole process. If that sounds like you, my question to you is: Are you ready to ask yourself a few uncomfortable questions?
Because this question is mostly about you. We need to clarify where you stand.
Are you ready to go there? Then I invite you to keep reading.
1. The first step: check your motivation
You’re in the middle of developing your youth ministry, and things are probably going really well right now. You have teenagers who urgently need to be part of a healthy group that follows Jesus, but inside you’re wrestling and hurting because you have the sense that you should hand over the youth ministry. So first, search your heart and answer this question:
Why do you think you should hand over the youth ministry?
- Maybe you have a new job that demands a lot of you, maybe you’ve taken on other responsibilities at church, maybe you’ve started a family. In short: maybe you’ve recently set your life on a different track, and volunteering with the youth group doesn’t fit anymore.
- Maybe the current group, the way it’s made up, is too much for you.
- Maybe you no longer feel up to it as a leader.
- Maybe God has suddenly told you no about youth ministry, without giving any further reasons.
Take a moment, look inward and put your cards on the table. I hope this soul-searching helps you take a good look at your life right now and find out whether leading the youth group is really the screw you need to turn, or whether there are other screws loose in your life 😉. Or maybe in this process you’ll realize that you have an incredible love for this ministry and would rather give up other things in your life than your commitment to the group.
If you realize that your motivation to give up the youth ministry is led by God, then you have to give up the youth ministry. Just like that. Without finding a solution for who will take over. That’s God’s job. God is bigger. He doesn’t depend on you personally doing this job forever and ever because there’s no one to take it over. It takes courage to say: I know my time is up, and I know I have to do it now.
And you simply know it’s time for something new for you. Then go. Even if there’s no one you can hand it over to.
Why you don’t have to find a successor
You say: “But a good transition is surely worth striving for! There have already been bad handovers in our church, and I absolutely don’t want to go through that in my youth ministry.”
To that I say: no, it isn’t worth striving for. A youth group, or any other group, will exist for as long as God takes care of it. It’s God’s job to call people. It’s his job to send volunteers, to put it on people’s hearts the way he put it on yours. Jesus himself talks about this in Matthew 9:37-38: the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. We’re to ask for more workers for the harvest.
We can only try to multiply. We can only try to invest in the next generation. So of course we do all the things we know we need to do. We put what we know into practice. Even so, we can end up in a situation where there’s no one to take over. But if you know it’s your path to leave now, then go, and bear it.
You say: “But we all influence each other! We’re a community. We’re responsible for blessing, empowering and recruiting one another! In the end, it’s our fault as a church if things don’t carry on.”
No, I don’t believe that. Our job isn’t to judge and condemn. So let it go, that’s the answer. It’s God’s business. He is responsible for the fruit. It isn’t in our hands, not even a little. And that’s hard. I understand that you’re hurting as you leave, and you know that something here might fall apart now.
But if you know you have to go, then go, and don’t think the world can only be saved by you.
It’s Jesus’ job, and when you go, a gap opens up at first. When the gap is there, the pressure or the emotion becomes so strong that people wake up to what’s missing and realize: Hey, maybe this is my job.
Is your standard too high?
And one more thing. Ask yourself whether the standard you set might be too high. Could it be that you lead such a smoothly running youth ministry that no one else can imagine stepping into your shoes? That you’re so cool that no one dares to take you on? Then maybe the ministry first has to hit rock bottom and go down to zero. When there’s nothing left, you can’t make it any worse. Then someone can say, “Hey, come on, I’ll gather the teens now and just do something.” But of course the comparison has to go first. That’s uncomfortable too. One example: in a church where a prominent leader of a denomination was a member, not a single person wanted to apply to be pastor, because they told themselves:
“I’m not going to that church. With the cool predecessor still around, I can only lose.”
2. The second step: talk to others about it
It’s important to also bring other people you trust and who know you into the process and let them speak into your life. For two reasons:
- First, that way you have someone you can talk to about it and get advice from. Jesus uses people to confirm our steps.
- Second, you should also bring your church leadership into the process. They are the church’s spiritual leaders and are responsible for its overall development. They also have impressions from Jesus and can help untie the knot and find new possibilities.
If you’re part of the church leadership or on the board of elders yourself, don’t carry your burden alone. You’ll be surprised how good that is for you. Your cry for help can also prompt the church to think carefully about its priorities, about how it coordinates its volunteers and about how it wants to treat its volunteers in general.
3. The third step: brace yourself for change
In the process of stepping away, it’s also important to communicate that it’s completely fine if things run differently than before. Something like: “I did it this way, and it’s totally okay if it’s done completely differently now.” After all, the youth ministry isn’t our youth ministry, it’s God’s youth ministry. That means you got to do it for a while, and now someone else gets to take it over and take the ministry one step further.
So I celebrate that, because I know the new person is now doing something I could never have done.
This is really about strengthening the new person in their personality and their gifts. That empowers them and opens up room to celebrate the process of change and say, “Hey, this is great, it’s SUPPOSED to be different now.” Because when it comes to calling, it’s never about things carrying on exactly as before. Never try to fill your predecessor’s place. Find your own place and fill it.
Bear the pain
I see your heart’s desire to train someone up and hand over your role responsibly. You keep trying to win people over, drawing them in with small tasks and trying to give them responsibility. Bear it when the new generation claims they’re too busy and can’t commit. All you can do is try to talk Gen Z out of their perfectionism. Their work-life balance is sacred to them, and if they’re not sure they can give 100 percent, they’d rather say no altogether.
So don’t wait forever for things to change. You may need to find the courage to let go of the ministry now, even if there’s no successor in sight. God can afford to let a group die sometimes, and I had to learn that the hard way myself.
You’re not the savior of the world. That’s Jesus’ job 🙂.
Tips for youth leaders
English version: October 2026
