As a youth pastor I've come to terms with the fact that I will never be rich, that's never been my life goal, at least not in financial terms.  Our first home we purchased was, to say the least, a "fixer-upper".  We believe it was rented out by the previous owner and it appeared to me that no one took any pride in that home.  Other than the basement ceiling there is literally no surface that we did not change.  We re-painted our yellow-stained ceilings, we painted all our walls updated colours, we put in laminate or linoleum or carpet on all the floors.  We put in new toilets, countertops, sinks, fixtures.  We did a lot of work to that home and all along the way I did my best to not only make it a place I could be proud of, but also the people who would buy it from us, and the people after them.  Throughout our extensive renovations I would use the previous owner's name in the exact same way that Seinfeld would say, "Newman".  Poor workmanship and poor materials had left me with a lot of extra work. 
     Just before we left we needed to replace the water heater, no cheap venture.  We bought the exact same water heater that we would have if we were planning to stay another 20 years.  We were asked why would we spend that kind of money when we were on our way out?  It's simple, we believe it honours God to treat the house like it's going to be ours forever even though we know it won't be.  We know someone else will be using that water heater and we want them to have a good one.  Also, we know that we'll be moving into a new home and we hope that they would do the same for us (on a side-note, the house we moved into has the highest degree of workmanship on their renos and the same water heater!)
     So why is my youth ministry blog all about renovations?  Like our homes, our ministries are typically only ours for a season.  How are you building your ministry for the next guy or girl? 
     I believe that my ministry is to take unhealthy youth minstries, build in health and structure and release them so the next pastor can take it to the next level.  I believe that my giftings help me to assess what changes need to be made and stick around for the next 5 or 6 years (or until terminated) to see those changes take place.  My big goals aren't set in months but years.  My goal is to always leave a ministry in a much better place than I found it. 
     It's not a new concept by any means, but I always have the goal of becoming replaceable.  I do not want to be the linchpin that holds together a youth ministry.  I know I've reached success when I could leave for a year and things would be able to run fairly unchanged in my absence.  It means buliding up great leaders who are bought into God's vision for that ministry.  It means being consistent with your students, giving them a safe place to worship, ask questions, grow and be challenged.  It means giving away responsibility and not having your finger in every pie or your foot in every door.  I always got so much joy from telling my lead pastor, "You'll have to ask (insert leader's name here) about that, they've really done all the work on this one."
     It's not that I'm lazy, I think it takes more work to delegate than to do it myself quite often.  I believe that a ministry shouldn't be build on one person.  Jethro pointed out to Moses that, "this is not good".  Jesus could have done it Himself but always chose to include others.  Who am I to do differently?
     As you lead your group, are you thinking about the next leader and the next leader after that or are you focused on using your own charisma to build it up and keep it running?  Will the ministry flounder and struggle when you are away or will be prepared to keep going?  I'd love to hear your stories!