I've had to dismiss volunteers before and it's never fun, especially when it's someone the kids love. I think your advice is good, but you forgot the most important tip: pray, talk it through with your pastor and church leaders first, pray some more.

Yeah, it is a little bit 'suck-up' but there's still good advice in there.

This is really cool, but I'm not sure it's particularly related to ministry no matter how much we want one! ;)

Some of the items listed should have been done before going to the pastor! Maybe you will veto the idea before he has to.

Is it ok for idols to worship Jesus? Interesting irony!

Yeah, Jesus is cool in this culture, but Christians aren't.

1. Never do it anyway and undermine his leadership. 2. Perhaps his wisdom is deeper than yours. 3. Perhaps God uses yours pastor to keep you from making an unforeseen mistake. 4. Maybe the pastor doesn't understand your vision, so you need to make it clearer to him and thereby everyone else. 5. Maybe you don't have a vision at all. 6. Maybe you have a vision and the pastor understands it and you two are just not aligned, in which case it's time for you to resign.

I echo rockinyp, the message of this article felt like "if you brown nose, everything will be fine."

Begs the question, "What do they come to the ministry looking for and expecting from us in the first place?"

Unfortunately, Christian has just as many stories like this, if not more.

I like Macs ok, but I do think they're mostly style over substance. Not that there's anything wrong with that if that's your thing.

VERY important discussion to have with youth leaders. Great questions!

Not sure I agree with #8. Kids know if you're genuinely interested or if "I'm just hanging out with you so you'll report good things back to your dad."

with your technical ability, tim, you could do that in your sleep...it is those sites for the C- techies of the web like me...but it is fun!! I look forward to seeing how that sight is used in power points all across the globe now!

I was out of town and my only connection was my iphone. I checked plug rug several times to check in and see what was going on. Optimizing it will me nice but it still worked great. Keep up the good work.

I'm scared to death of performing a wedding! I'll avoid that as long as I can. lol

Yeah, PlugRug works fine from my Touch, also, but everything is just so small. I gotta pinch and stretch everything to read it. Annoying. I'll have it optimized for the iPhone/iPod Touch within a couple weeks.

Yeah, I'm already working on it. You inspired me! Give me a couple weeks to work out an iPhone/iPod Touch template for the site.

Woah, that site is sweet! lol

Thanks for plugging this, dmehrel!

Grahame, you're amazing! I'm so glad you decided to enter the youth ministry blogging world from the UK!

I definitely think this site should be optimized for iPhone! That'd be sweet!

Your pastor is a wise man! Something for every youth pastor to reflect on.

I didn't think of that but longevity does build trust. My Pastor would always say you don't even start a ministry until you are at a place for two years and you don't hit your stride until year 5! Wow! I can attest to that... the graphic was easy to create and fun... http://diy.despair.com/motivator.php here is the link!

Really helpful checklist.Good comments and discussion on the original post too.