Ministry

By Jamie Alexander

In today’s youth ministry culture the biggest fear for most leaders is not public speaking or planning the greatest new trip. It is the personal, one-on-one conversation.  When I tell adults about the work we do in Young Life, they often tell me they could never do what I do because they cannot connect with adolescents.  I believe this is the biggest lie in our culture.  We can all connect with adolescents . . . and with each other. God created us this way. We just have to be willing to search for a way to do it. So how do you have an open conversation with a teenager?

• Spend time with them.  Our fast-paced world tells us we should get what we want quick and with no effort. Culture seems to say that “meaningful relationships” can be built with a 140-character burst in a text message.  As much as our adolescent friends live and respond in this world, quick connections are not the way to their heart. Helpful tools? Sure, but not the way in. Think about those close to you. Why are they that way? Is it because you have spent time with one another? I’m willing to place a bet on that. I love spending time with my adolescent friends–not for any specific reason but just for the sake of spending time with them. I have operated under this advice in my life: “No one cares what you have to say until they know you care.”  How true this is, especially in the current youth culture. Relationships are not built overnight; they take time, sweat, and sometimes tears. Trust and promises are easily broken in today’s world. Because they have often been disappointed, teenagers are often guarded with their trust. Developing their trust may take time, but it is worth the effort. When you have their trust, you have the key to speaking truth into their lives.
• Make Memories Together.  I believe that the quickest way to gain common ground with a teenager is to create a shared experience. Make memories together: camping trips, ball games, midnight paintball, or build something together with your hands. My fondest memories of my teenage years are with my Young Life leader Ed as we talked and rebuilt a catamaran sailboat over a few weekends. Ed earned a voice with me as a teenager and still has it to this day because we lived life together.
• Don’t expect quick results. The beauty of doing ministry is that ultimately we are not in charge at all. God is. Trust that He will control conversations, open doors for the right words, and set up situations where you get to speak of Him. My personal view of open conversations with adolescents is, “it may take time.” I don’t believe in rushing into things. If I want what I say to stick with a teenage friend, I have to be willing to wait for him to be ready to hear. Otherwise it is likely to go in one ear and out the next.
• Pray. There is a saying going around: “The highest form of arrogance is ministry without prayer.” This one is simple yet so hard sometimes. Are you praying? Pray before every encounter with a teenager, whether or not you have plans to share about Jesus with them. You never know what God has in store for your time together.

Jamie Alexander is the Area Director for Young Life Shelby County in Alabama. Young Life brings the good news of Jesus Christ into the lives of adolescents with an approach that is respectful of who kids are and hopeful about who they can be. For more information about the ministry of Young Life Shelby County, visit their website at www.shelby.younglife.org. For more information about the ministry of Young Life around the world, visit www.younglife.org.

My mother has a little sign hanging in her kitchen saying, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all.” She laughs about how she finds herself doing and saying the very things my grandmother used to do and say . . . things that once annoyed her. Perhaps her little sign bears more truth than that. Recent research indicates a strong correlation between the faith of parents and the faith their children will grow up with.

As a youth leader, you are an influence on the faith of your teenagers . . . but you are not THE influence. Statistically speaking parents are the strongest influence on the faith development of their teenage children by far. For better or for worse, when it comes to their teenage children, what parents are is what they are likely to get.

So, if parents have such significant influence on the faith of their teenagers, why don’t parents try to make more of a difference?

Being a parent of a teenager is a challenge. It is easy for those of us who have never raised children to be frustrated with and critical of parents. Perhaps it would be more beneficial for us to understand the challenges . . . and then figure out how to help.

Five Challenges of Parenting Adolescents:

1. Teenagers need the loving input of their parents . . . but they tend to push parents away. Teenagers have a growing desire for personal space and privacy. They want the opportunity to think things out on their own. They want to feel like they are an autonomous adult. Their grunts when parents show interest and their frustration when mom was “in my room” give parents the idea that their teenagers don’t want parents in their lives. It’s not true. Teens crave loving input from their parents. But it sure feels true.

2. Parents who are middle-aged, or quickly approaching their 40′s, have some unique stressors on their own lives. They are often sandwiched between the needs of their teenage kids and their aging parents . . . all at the time when their bodies are beginning to slow down.

3. The role of parenting during adolescence becomes confusing. As children, parents knew their job. They were to teach kids right from wrong, protect them from things that would harm their kids, and show them how to live life. Parents were the respected source of authority to their children. But that all changes in adolescence. Teenagers challenge the authority of parents, push them to defend their ideas of truth, and scoff at parents’ desires to keep them safe. The truth is, teenagers are becoming adult and parenting a teenager demands a whole new set of skills. Parents need to become more of a mentor, challenging youth to think more deeply rather than just giving them easy answers. It is a shift in responsibility few parents manage easily.

4. Parents of teenagers must balance responsibilities, freedom, and limits. Most parents get that. The problem is finding the balance. Most of the time a parent doesn’t realize she has given a teenage child too much freedom until he has abused the freedom. Establishing a new limit is tough. The crazy thing is, the correct balance is different for every teenager.

5. Teenagers need to see faith reflected in the lives of their parents. of course, that is really hard if the parent is not walking with Christ.

So, how do we help?

1. Make sure parents know we are on their side–not on their side against their teenager, but on their side for their teenager.

2. Pray for parents. And let them know you are praying for them.

3. Never criticize a parent (or a parent’s rules) to the teenage child. If teenagers complain to you about their parents, remember: you are only getting a skewed view of the situation. Encourage the teenager to find ways to talk to her parents about her frustrations.

4. Include parents in youth ministry experiences at times. Look for ways to help parents to talk about faith in front of their kids.

5. Remind parents of the great influence they have on their teenagers. Encourage them not to give up when their teenagers push them away. Encourage them to keep the dialogue going.

“Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused.”

The quote was written by science fiction and suspense author, Dean Koontz. I wouldn’t suggest Koontz is a great theologian or a good youth ministry theorist. But this quote has caused me to reflect. Perhaps we have two kinds of lonely teenagers in our youth groups: those who push people away and those to whom no one goes. Sure, teenagers tend to run in herds. Most of them are surrounded by other teenagers . . . at school, church, on teams, in clubs. And yet, Chap Clark characterized teenagers of this generation as Hurt (Baker Books, 2004).

Recently a student in my Lifespan Development class made a case that the one significant need in the lives of teenagers is love. Teenagers may need other things (like truth, empowerment, and the occasional new pair of basketball shoes), but I think the student was not far from the mark.

For the teenager who has shut the door to the world to escape the constant meanness and pressure, perhaps love looks like a cautious knock at the door . . . a request to be trusted friend even though many friends have proven unworthy of trust. And perhaps it is a knock we try again and again until the student cracks open the door.

For the teenager who waits behind an unused door, perhaps love looks like an intentional step into his or her world.

Youth ministry is largely about getting students face to face with the Living God. We want teenagers to experience God’s grace, his forgiveness, his lavish love, his empowerment, and  . . . well, his presence. We want teenagers to live for Christ, but that never means they are doing it on their own. Rather, it means that they are walking in the presence of God to the point that their actions change in order to conform with his directions according to his power. We want our teenagers to share the truth of Christ, but not in their own power. We want them to speak as the Holy Spirit guides them. At its core, Christianity is not a set of religious truths to be believed (although there certainly are some of those). At its core, Christianity is a relationship with the Savior.

Prayer, then, is not so much a spiritual practice that adds value to our religious practice, but THE vital connection with God. Prayer is a two-way connection with God that allows us to bear our burdens and frustrations and pain before him AND allows us to hear the love, forgiveness, and encouragement he speaks into our hearts. It is both the way we ask him to channel his power into the areas of life in which we see a need AND the way he impresses us with his call on our lives for ministry.

So, why is it so easy for prayer to become nothing more than the quick moment that signals the beginning of our Bible study or a hurried word of thanks before a meal? Youth ministry should guide students to significant moments of prayer that cause them to hunger for opportunities to stand in the presence of God. There is much we could discuss about making prayer a vital focus of youth ministry, but I want to share three principles that I believe are opportunities for your youth ministry to shape the prayer lives of your students.

1. Prayer moves from mature believer to new Christian.Oddly enough, a walk with God is “more caught than taught.” When students hear you pray, they begin to understand what prayer really is. If you pray with passion, urgency, vulnerability, and love, your students will begin to see that as the norm for prayer. Little by little. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. If your students observe you treating prayer as a “filler,” they will see prayer as a religious exercise we do that may or may not have any real meaning.

2. Prayer moves from experience with others to private experience.We should teach teenagers the values of personal prayer time. However, their personal prayer life will probably develop as they experience corporate prayer. The more they find group prayer to be meaningful and valuable, the quicker they will make that the practice of their private lives. I think we should quickly move to praying together . . . in twos or threes, or with the entire group. Prayer in the hallway or prayer over the phone may have as much impact on the students’ personal prayer as the time you spend praying with the entire group.

3. Prayer moves from personal requests to deeper relationship. Okay, let me just admit it: I get sick of hearing teenagers ask for prayer for their sports team to win or for their spelling quiz next week. It’s not that I think God doesn’t care about those things. It’s more that I get tired of prayer that seems to focus on selfish priorities rather than God’s priorities. However, for most of us, a heart for prayer begins by seeing God answer prayer requests that may not have the theological depth that may be really important. Yes, we need to encourage our students to grow toward praying for God’s priorities, but students will get it as they understand that God is concerned about every facet of our lives.

If the practice of prayer in your youth ministry has become routine, banal, uninspired, perhaps it is time to refocus on helping teenagers to connect face to face with the living God. Perhaps it is time to infuse real prayer into how you are teaching your group to pray together.

By Doug Tiemann

According to a recent study (Journal of School Health, 2008), suicide is the third leading cause of death among individuals aged fifteen to twenty-four–this comprises 12.9% of all deaths in that age-range. In 2004, suicides that occurred in young adults fifteen to twenty-four represented a staggering 14.2% of deaths in this age range in the United States. Furthermore, in 2003 and 2004 this was the only form of death that increased in adolescents.

Why is suicide such a consistent and even growing trend among the young? Youth often see suicide as an answer to their problems. These problems can include family problems or academic pressures. Students may feel unable to deal with the issues of life and see this as the only release from the burdens they experienced. Oddly, a root cause of suicide for some youth may be a form of egocentrism. Kids become consumed with self, feeling every part of life is a pressure on them as an individual; in extreme examples, their response to this pressure is suicide. Three factors that seem to stick out others: parental divorce, parental separation, and suicide of a close friend or family member. These factors often lead students to feelings of personal failure and guilt.

When students are considering suicide, many will talk with friends about their thoughts or plans. Helping the teenagers in your youth group to know what to look for and how to respond can help a student struggling with thoughts of suicide. Alert your students to listen to their peers when they hear someone make statements about wanting to die or feeling like life is not worth living. Teach them to see signs of suicide, such as a friend who begins giving away his or her possessions. Most importantly, tell your students that when they suspect a peer might be considering suicide, they need to tell someone . . . a school counselor, a teacher, or a youth leader. Help them to understand it would be better to raise the issue and be wrong than to not raise the issue and be right.

Suicide is never an easy issue to tackle or to engage however; ministers cannot afford to ignore it on any level. It is a reality among the youth of America and the world but it is only invisible if the Church allows it to be.

Doug Tiemann serves as Worship Pastor at Hillside Church of Marin. He also invests his time working with the youth of Hillside, enriching them in the area of worship through music as well as sharing teaching responsibilities.  He is currently earning his Masters of Divinity at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

Maybe it is the student who threatens suicide on the youth trip. Maybe it is the teenager who tells you he thinks he may be gay. Maybe it is the girl in your group that just quits eating and begins to waste away. But at some point in your ministry, you will encounter a situation that, if you are honest with yourself, you know that you cannot handle. How do you get help for a teenager that needs help you cannot give him or her? A Marriage and Family Counselor from San Francisco, Maggie Arbino, spoke to my youth ministry class this week. She shared some ideas that I think are fantastic and I wanted to share them with you.

The best time to build a list of people you can refer kids and their parents to is BEFORE you encounter the crisis. I know, you never expect to hit the really big problems with your group. After all, you know them. You know their families. However, some teenagers will experience crises and your students are not immune. Yes, Jesus will be there for them. Your prayers will make a difference. But sometimes kids need a professional counselor to work through the tragedies they face in their lives. Start now building your referral list. When a teenager encounters a crisis, you will be ready to connect her family with professional help.

Who do you need on your referral list? Locate a psychiatrist, an M.D. with expertise in psychiatric problems. Locate family counselors and professional counselors who have expertise with adolescents. Include someone who is a clinical social worker. Also, get to know school counselors as well as other emergency medical personnel in your area. If your town has a crisis pregnancy center, get to know the people who run that as well.

How do you find the right people? Ask medical personnel in your church to suggest individuals. Before you add people to your referral list, contact them. Ask them about their credentials, the kind of patients they usually work with, how they support the faith of the people you would refer to them, what their fee scale is like, whether they accept insurance, and whether they are accepting new patients.

When do you refer? When you realize you are dealing with something that is beyond your training, you should consider connecting the family of the teenager with an appropriate person. Talk with the family and the teenager about why you think he would benefit from professional counseling help. Contact professionals ahead of time and make sure they are willing to accept new clients. Try to give the family two or three names and let them select the person they think can best help them. Keep in mind that referring a teenager to a professional does not mean you back out of her life. Stay connected and keep investing in her life.

In Luke 9, Jesus’ Disciples came to him and asked him to send the crowds into the local towns to find a McDonalds. I suppose the Disciples were showing some concern for the people, but I wonder if the stomachs they were most concerned about weren’t their own. Of course, Jesus had another plan in mind. He told the Disciples to feed the crowd themselves. And the story goes on to show an amazing picture of Jesus as God; just as God provided manna in the wilderness, so Jesus, God in flesh, provided bread for the crowds. But the tendency of the disciples to send the crowds away may be similar to a problem faced by many small youth groups.

Small youth groups can become very inwardly focused. When you ask your students talk about what they would like to do as a group, do the activities begin to sound pretty self-serving? Does Bible study ever feel more about your group feeling good about itself rather than driving your group members to become missional servants of God? It is not unusual for a youth group to become inwardly focused, and it is important that students develop close relationships with each other. But, Jesus’ plans for his disciples seemed to be that they reach out to those lost and without a shepherd all around them, and I think that is the same plan he has for your youth group.

Help your students to see your youth group as on mission with God. Most teenagers get involved in youth groups because of their friends. They come to Bible studies and activities to be with their friends. However, students need to grow to see their youth ministry as something more than a group of friends. God’s mission in the world is to reclaim those who are lost. He uses many ways to accomplish that purpose, but his desire is to forgive and redeem the lost in your community and around the world. How can your students begin to see their part in God’s plan? How can you paint that picture for them?

Guide your students to understand what it means to be lost. We never want to talk about the futility of life without Christ. It feels better to say things like: Everyone just has to find his or her own way. But the truth is, without Christ, people are missing the deep relationship with God that fulfills their very purpose of life and they are in danger of spending eternity separated from God. Lostness is not a lifestyle choice; it is a blindness that is caused by our own sin clouding our sight of what is right and true and good. The cure is the dazzling revelation of Jesus Christ and his forgiveness. How can you help your students understand what it is really like to be without Christ? How can you help them to care?

Encourage your students to pray for their lost friends. There is nothing that will open their hearts to the things of God like praying for the salvation of their friends. Look for your prayer times at youth group to be more about people who need Jesus and less about the list of ailments of everyone they can remember. Invest in times of prayer in which students are able to lift up their friends (perhaps without mentioning their names), and asking God to lead them to faith.

Lead your students to make your youth group a place where all people feel welcomed, included, and loved. Regardless of how many students you can get to come to your youth group because of your dynamic personality, few will stay for very long if they don’t feel loved and accepted by the group. On the other hand, when your group becomes a place where people feel welcomed, love, and included, it will be hard to keep students away. How can you help your students to embrace new students? How you can help them to build real friendship with new students and not just say the obligatory “hi and welcome”?

Death is one of those subjects most of us would just as soon avoid. Many teenagers in your youth group will face death. They may lose a grandparent. In a few crisis situations, death may strike a friend. A few may experience the death of a member of their immediate family. When teenagers face death, how do you help? Here are a few things to keep in mind when one of your students experiences the death of someone close to him or her:

1. Every grief experience is different. How a teenager will experience grief depends on a vast number of factors: the personality of the student, how close the student felt to the person who died, the extent to which the death will change the student’s life, how profoundly the student experiences the death as a threat to his or her own mortality, the social support system that surrounds the teenager, and more. Don’t expect teenagers to follow a script in the way they deal with death. Allow each of them to express their feelings of grief in ways that fit them.
2. Students may act out their feelings in ways that are harmful to themselves or others. Some teenagers may lash out at others. Some may be violet or destructive. Some may turn to alcohol or illegal drugs. Stay close to the student. Make contact often, especially when the student loses someone very close to them to death. Watch for danger signs. If you discover (or suspect) the teenager is engaging in dangerous behavior, get help. Don’t try to address this on your own. Talk to the parents and then find a Christian counselor who can help the student with intense anger and pain.
3. Death comes in many forms. The hardest losses to get over are usually sudden. When a parent dies with a sudden heart attack or a friend is killed in an accident, teenagers will tend to play the event over and over again in their minds. They will question what they could have done to prevent the situation. They may blame themselves for the death. Listen to teenagers thoughts and concerns. Make sure they know that you are seeking to understand how they feel. It is unlikely the teenager could have done anything to prevent the death; assure them that they are not at fault.However, death can also come in the form of long, drawn-out illness. A parent may contract cancer or a grandparent may die after months or years of illness. While the long illness can be tormenting, teenagers usually have time to say good-bye and to work through some of their feelings during the illness. Occasionally, parents will try to shield their teenager from the news of impending death. That is seldom helpful and can be harmful to teenagers. It may help parents to talk through with them how to tell their teenager.

When a teenager in your youth group faces the death of someone close, the most important thing you can do is be close. Offering love, support, and a listening ear, and assuring them of God’s love and concern for him or her is normally the most valuable thing you can do.

The age of marriage has risen sharply in recent years. The idea that teenagers should be preparing for marriage may sound archaic. Robert Havighurst included preparation for marriage as one of his developmental tasks for adolescents. So, should we be helping teenagers to prepare for marriage or is that an old-fashioned idea? And if we should be helping them, how should we go about it?

Assisting students with their developmental issues is really not our primary calling in youth ministry. We are called to make disciples. However, discipleship involves a total life commitment. Helping teenagers walk with Christ means paying attention to all of those things they are going through.

Still, is Havighurst out of date, or do teenagers really need to prepare for marriage? Our culture seems to view dating and sexual relationships as recreation. Some teenagers “hook up” with multiple partners for heavy make-out sessions and sexual encounters, but they don’t see this as related to their future marriage partners at all. That is a gross perversion of everything God says about male/female relationships.

The Bible never really talks about dating. (It was more typical during biblical history for marriages to be arranged than for individuals to find their own partners.) However, in American culture dating is the way young people learn about opposite-sex relationships, discern what qualities in a partner fit them well, and ultimately find their life partner. Teenagers are learning to relate to the opposite sex. The problem is they often get bad instruction on what makes a healthy relationship. The flirtation with members of the opposite sex IS preparation for their future marriage . . . even if it is preparation for a bad marriage.

How do you help your teenagers prepare for their marriage? A marriage that may be many years away?

First, teach them what the Bible says about romance, marriage, and sex. Help them to understand that they are building their character in the way they treat members of the opposite sex now.

Second, guide them to begin to think about how they can be architects of godly families. Talk to them about potholes many people fall into that cause their marriages and their families to fall short of honoring God.

Third and most importantly, give them godly examples. If you are married, work to make your marriage strong. Help them to see that, though good marriage is work, marriage can be a partnership in service to God. And whether you are married or not, find other people in your church who can model what godly marriage can and should be for your students. Help them to have opportunities to interact with and hear from people who are working at creating a godly home.

Adolescents are developing into the people they will be as adults. It can be a frustrating passage for adolescents . . . and for adults who work closely with them. In a large church, emotional outbursts may not disrupt the entire group, but the raw feelings that are so much a part of adolescents can really derail a study or event in a small youth group. Have you ever had anything like this happen?

You are sitting in church devotionals at the end of camp with your band of students. The students are sharing ways they experienced God during the day. Suddenly one of the younger girls bursts into tears and runs out of the room. Everyone sits in stunned silence. Later you get a chance to talk to her one-on-one. Her eyes water again as she begins to tell you how she really likes an older boy in the youth group. Right before devotions, she claims he looked at her like he wished she was dead. “I just couldn’t take it,” she explains. You talk to the young man. He has no idea what you are talking about, but he doesn’t want the girl to think he doesn’t care about her so he goes to apologize.

Emotions in teenagers are driven by hormones. The rapid changes in their bodies often lead them to respond with extreme feelings. Teenagers are seldom just happy . . . they are DELIRIOUSLY OVERJOYED. Teenagers can fly into a rage with a minor annoyance. And a wrong look can send them into depression.

In describing the developmental tasks of adolescence, Robert Havighurst suggests that, during their teenage years, teenagers should achieve emotional independence. The goal is not for teenagers to lose the need for any emotional support. None of us ever really achieve that, nor should we. Rather the goal is for teenagers to learn how to manage their emotions so that their emotions don’t control their lives.

So, how do you help the youth you work with to move toward emotional independence?

First, realize that “emotional roller coasters” are a part of growing up. Don’t over-react when a teenager responds to you angrily or with tears. Accept them as they are now.

Second, give teenagers permission to feel. Tell them that, when it seems like someone is snubbing you, it makes sense to feel hurt. When someone does something mean to you, you should feel anger.

Third, teach them the importance of “self-talk.” It is often not the situation but rather what we tell ourselves about the situation that leads to strong negative emotion. Don’t tell yourself: He looked at me in a nasty way; he must hate me. Instead, tell yourself: He seemed to look at me in a nasty way, but we are friends so he probably didn’t mean anything by it. I think I’ll ask him later if there is a problem.

Finally, encourage teenagers to carry their frustrations, hurts, and anxieties to God. He loves them and cares deeply about what they feel.