Deciding whether or not to leave a youth ministry position is perhaps the most difficult issue youth workers face. It's typically marked by gut-wrenching periods of soul-searching and cross-examination—coupled with a desire to seek God's will and the constant fear of wrong motives.

So many conflicting signals. So many options. So much advice from so many corners. But there are no tried-and-true, fill-in-the-blank formulas that'll lead us in exactly the right direction every single time.

What can we do? We can start by asking ourselves questions. Hard questions. And our answers should lead us down the right paths.

Here are five to begin getting us through this process:

1. Have I been here long enough to reach my most effective years?

One pastor put it this way: "In the first two years of a pastorate, you can't do anything wrong. In the third and forth years, you can't do anything right. By the fifth and sixth years, either you leave; the people leave who think you can't do anything right; or you change; or they change; or you both change. By the seventh year, you really start to get productive."

While this pastor doesn't refer to youth ministry per se, there's good reason to believe the same is true for youth workers. No formal studies have proven a correlation between youth workers with long tenures and successful youth ministries, but the anecdotal evidence points in that direction.

Paul Borthwick—himself a prime example of a youth worker with a long tenure in the same locale—says that sticking with one youth ministry affords many benefits:

• Effectiveness with young people increases because they trust you.

• Results (a hard-to-find commodity in youth work) become more noticeable when those who've graduated return to join the youth team.

• Parents trust you more, which builds more continuity between families and the youth ministry.

• Lay leaders are trained with one consistent philosophy and ministry strategy over a period of time.

• You become the church's expert on adolescents (from Organizing Your Youth Ministry).

2. Do I have a dream for this ministry?

Can you remember what it felt like to be excited about youth work? To dream about what God could do with your ministry? If we've lost the ability to dream about the possibilities in our youth ministries, that's a strong sign that it's time to move on. Beware of professional stagnation. We need continuous challenge and steady vision if we're to stay in youth work for the long haul.

3. Do my spiritual gifts match the present needs of my ministry?

We must bear in mind that our ministries may begin requiring gifts and abilities that we're not equipped to fill. At that point it may be wise to decrease so that new leadership can increase.

Research shows that as many as 20 percent of youth workers report similar circumstances—the inability to adapt to their changing ministry settings or cultures.