Recently Rick Lawrence of Group Magazine published the results of a survey of 20,000 plus teens answering the following questions:

• What would you like to do More of in your church’s youth ministry? (these results were published in the latest print version of Group)
• What is your biggest challenge in growing deeper in your relationship with God?
• What is your biggest regret in your relationship with God?
• What is your biggest hope in your relationship with God?
• If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I found the published results to the first question to be mostly bothersome and frustrating.  It seemed to me that there was too much emphasis on games and activities, hang out time, and other similar types of things.  What was encouraging was what came in at #1 even if only by a little bit…Learning about Jesus.  This isn’t the story though.  The story, in my opinion, is what is found in the rest of the survey published online here.

As a dad for the last 13 years I have slowly learned that what my child wants is much different than what that child needs.  Is it really surprising that students want to have more fun?  No, of course not.  What is surprising is the number of parents, youth pastors, and leaders that listen to this and go no further.  Teenagers are adolescent minds that have not fully developed.  This does not discredit their answers; it just means that those of us with fully developed minds (some more than others) should take this into consideration when reading these results.  Example:

• The #1 answer regarding what they want more of may be learning about Jesus, but Help in understanding the Bible (our primary source regarding Jesus) doesn’t show up until #12 followed by learning about the New Testament, sermons that focus on the Bible doesn’t show up until #36, a Bible study that focuses on a book of the Bible doesn’t show up until #38.

America has been blessed and teens in America have seen the blessing but not the cost.  Because of this and other cultural factors they often see what they want, but don’t realize what is required.  This survey brings this perception to the forefront.

The most significant question asked was “What’s the biggest challenge in growing deeper in your relationship with God?”  The answers were no surprise.  The top 3 answers can be boiled down to two:  schedule and parents.  Even busyness is a parent issue.  Parents model the importance of spiritual things by how they manage their time and it is the parents role to help students learn to manage their time.

There are many other significant observations that could be made.  I think this survey is important and should be read and gone over by every youth ministry professional that can get their hands on it, but I want to end by bringing things full circle.

Students may want to learn about Jesus, but don’t want to study the Bible, they want to go to church because it is fun or because their friends are there, but they don’t want to listen to good teaching.  Some may want to be more spiritual but aren’t willing to participate in spiritual disciplines.  The job of the Youth Pastor is to help students fall more in love with God.  That doesn’t mean we don’t do the fun stuff they want, but it does mean we often do things they need,  but don’t necessarily want.

So what?  Well, that is up to you as a parent, youth pastor, or youth leader.   As we think about our philosophy of ministry we could ask these kinds of questions:

• Am I giving students enough of what they need?
• Am I helping students understand what is required in order to get what they want?
• How do we give students enough of what they want (keeping it attractive) and at the same time make sure they are getting what they need?
• What is it that students need?  What is the most effective way to give that to them?

Drugs have become such a prevalent part of our society that we talk with our kids about them at a young age.  There are books all over the place about how to deal with dating and sex with children and teens, but what about homosexuality?

Elephants grow.  I know, it is obvious but sometimes I think we ignore a lot of issues and hope they won’t impact our lives or our students life.  Homosexuality was a fringe issue that, for the most part, could be ignored a decade or two ago.  Today it is a major issue in our schools connected to bullying, “safe zones,”  and teaching on tolerance.  It was a baby elephant not that long ago, but elephants grow and this is now a large animal that must be dealt with in our ministries and in our families.

The “tolerance” indoctrination started with my daughter when she was in kindergarten.  She was told everyone’s opinion is of equal value.  The homosexual indoctrination started when she was in second grade when she was told to do a family tree.  Part of the curriculum was that all family situations are of equal value:  two mommies are the same as two daddies or a mom and dad.

Pastors and leaders we need to talk about the elephant in the room in our ministries.  It isn’t going to go away and our students will fall for the deception because the deception started when they were very young.

Parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, we must talk with our children when they are young, we must pay attention, we must teach them both Biblical arguments and non-Biblical arguments.  We must both immunize them from the false arguments they will receive in school and equip them to make good arguments so they can impact culture.

How do we do it?  As a parent I am always asking my daughter if they are talking about certain topics.  I may say, “Catrina, are you guys talking about homosexuality in school?”  It may sound weird, but I don’t care it’s my job as a dad.  As a youth pastor I teach on passages like Romans 1, Lev. 22, 1 Cor. 6:9-10, etc…  I bring it up with compassion and love, but I do not shy away from truth because “love rejoices in truth” (1 Cor. 13).

The elephant is growing, it’s time to deal with it!

We must teach kids and teens about marriage.  No, I’m not from some back hills county where it is okay to marry 14 year olds (or younger).  That said, there is this casual approach to relationships as if they are not a big deal.  Not that long ago I had a conversation with a 4th or 5th grader that brought this to light.

Let me set the backdrop.  This was a Sunday morning at The Rock, there wasn’t really anything different about this particular Sunday.  I was wondering around during one of the services.  We do not have Sunday morning programing for our Senior High Students, but I like to hang out between services and talk to them so during the services I often don’t have much to do.  On this Sunday I had engaged in another conversation with this student just a few minutes earlier.  I ran into him again when he was with his class who was on their way to another room and I heard the teacher say, “Fred (not his real name) don’t you be sneaking off with Susie (not her real name) to get some kissy face.”  I stopped cold in my tracks.  I looked at Fred and said, “is she your girlfriend?”  Fred, “yes.”  Me, “oh, do you think you are going to marry her?”  Fred with a lot of attitude, “NO.”  Me, “Why are you dating her if you know you’re not going to marry her?”  Fred with more attitude, “YOU’RE WEIRD!!”

I desperately hope that conversation bothers you as much as it bothers me.  I realize there are some people who think kids dating is cute, but I know the mom who got called to school because her 8th grade daughter was caught having sex literally in a closet, the conversations I have over and over again with teens who are having sex with their boy/girlfriend because they have not been taught at an early age what the dangers are (I’m not talking about std’s and pregnancy), the multiple conversations I have had with guys who’s girlfriends got pregnant and then had abortions, or the junior high students who start dating and even the leaders think that couple will be the exception and they will not have sex and remain pure for the next 8 years and then they will get married.  Dating at any age isn’t “cute”  it is a serious activity for a serious purpose.  There are couples who are cute, but dating itself is not cute.

The problem is actually pretty simple to identify, the problem is that dating has become the goal not marriage.  This reminds me of another conversation I had with my daughter.  I was at a school function with her class and she came up to me and asked me this questions, “Daddy, can I start dating when I am 15?”  My answer started simple and quick, “no, why do you ask?”  My daughter, “my friend gets to start dating when she is 15 so I wanted to know if I could.”  Now that I had a moment to think about the question she asked me I responded with some thoughtful questions of my own.  “Catrina (my daughter) when do you think you will get married?”  her, “I don’t know.”  Me, “well do you think it will be when you are 16, 18, 23, 25?”  Her, “Daddy, you said I couldn’t get married until I was 30.”  Me, “you can get married earlier than that, but let’s say you end up getting married early like your mom and dad did, lets say you were going to get married at 20.”  Her, “ok.”  Me, “how long do you think it will take you to find a husband?”  Her, “…oooooh.”

In that moment she realized what the purpose of dating was and I developed my entire strategy for how we will approach this issue as she gets older.  I know she is going to want to date earlier, and I know I might grow tired of fighting with her about it, but I also know that you can’t hit the target if you don’t keep your eye on it.

Put simply I teach my students about marriage not dating, I teach them what kind of decisions they should be making now in order to have a good marriage later.  I teach them about the goal and then work backwards so they can clearly see how the right process leads to the goal.

My daughter follows along during the sermon filling in the blanks in the outline and reading the passages in her bible.  My son usually plays quietly with a car, but he sings and pays attention some of the time (not bad for a four year old).  This week he was very interested in watching mommy sing.  The choir got up and sang while a montage of clips from “The Passion of the Christ” played in the background.  Jo, my son, was a little upset about what they did to Jesus.  When my wife sat down he started to ask questions about the “movie.”  My wife took him out of the room and began to explain why Jesus had to go through that.  Before you call us irresponsible parents, please understand that the clips shown were not the really bad clips, but they were bad enough.

Jo gets a daily does of Bible reading every night at home.  He has heard the gospel many times, but it never really impacted him until this day with those visuals.  At the tender age of four, he accepted Christ.

I know what some of you are thinking.  It is true that it would be easy to manipulate him into saying a prayer.  That is not what happened here.  As parents we have been very purposeful about telling our kids about Jesus and very careful regarding their ability to understand what is being communicated.  I accepted Christ when I was four and I can still visualize that moment to this day.  Some of you are thinking this is the first of many times he will “accept Christ.”  Maybe, but it would be irresponsible on our part to not explain the gospel to him, and to not allow him to “accept Christ.”  Maybe there will be 20 more times, I don’t know.  What I do know is that on this day I am glad this little person was in Big Church.

As parents we must take seriously the task of teaching our kids to go to church.  This is true when it comes to teenagers as well.  What are you doing in your church to teach people how to go to church?  If my four year old can get something out of it, then so can teenagers.  People will only get out of it what they put into it.  Taking notes and looking up passages is an essential part of attending church and listening to a sermon.  In an entertainment driven world, people need to be taught how to do this from a young age, it is not intuitive.

Who am I?

“Who am I?”  This is the question virtually every teen asks themselves.  Identity is important in more ways than most could imagine.  It isn’t just about a sense of self worth, it is much more.  Students gather into groups based on ethnicity, dress, activities, and all kinds of other things in an attempt to fulfill their need for an identity.  Everyone wants to belong, they desire a purpose for their own existence or at least a group of people to exist with.  Growing up my mom used a phrase with me, it was “guilty by association.”  The principal is simple, you are who you hang out with.  This certainly has limits, but lets think about this.  We tend to act like those we are around.  When I travel to the south after a few days I start talking slower, saying “ya all,” and if I am there long enough I might even develop a little bit of an accent.  This is especially true for teenagers.  They want desperately to be accepted, to belong!!

When it comes to identity, it can be one of the biggest obstacles a person faces in sharing their faith, it can also be their sources of strength.  Let me explain.  Who we are, and who we identify with isn’t just about self –esteem, it spills over to how we behave and what we believe.  This is exactly why Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  The point was clearly not hate, but identity.  Jesus knew that a person who found their identity somewhere else would not allow him to be the most influential person in their life.

Think about being in tenth grade.  You go to school and you find yourself surrounded by others who love _____________ like you do.  They believe in God, but they certainly don’t practice their faith or they believe in a different god.  You attend youth group and your youth pastor, or leader tells you that you need to tell others about Jesus.  You begin to get excited, but then he says, “let’s start with your friends at school.”  When you think about it, when we ask many students to share their faith, we are asking them to abandoned their identity.  If they share their faith they might be ostracized by the very people that give them their identity.  It is in circumstances like this that identity can be a huge obstacle for evangelism.

This is why it is so important to develop a place where students feel like they belong, a place where they find their identity outside of school, a place where believing Jesus and telling others about Jesus is celebrated.  If this is the case and a student begins to find their identity at church and, most importantly, in Christ, their identity becomes their strength.  Making a decision to follow Christ is not only about heaven and hell, it is about finding our understanding of who we are and who we were created to be in the God we serve.

Fear of rejection is a symptom of false identity.  A closer look at 2 Corinthians 5 helps us to see this:

Versus 1-10

These verses are filled with what is commonly called eternal perspective.  Our earthly bodies or tents (as Paul calls them) are not permanent.  Ultimately our identity should be based on our relationship to Christ.  One day we will lose these bodies and get new ones, and when we do we will be with Jesus.  That is the day we should look forward to.  Until that day comes, we must realize the purpose we were created for, to please God.

Versus 11-15

Because our identity is found in our citizenship in heaven, our eternal bodies, our never ending, glorified tents given to us by God, our lives are to be lived for Jesus because it is in Jesus that we also died.

Versus 16-21

Though we died in Christ, we were also raised with Him, made new creations, and given the ministry of reconciliation; that is reconciling people to God.

So in this passage seems to be a logical order, first we realize that this life is temporary, then we begin to understand that our focus need to be long term, eternal, then we are free to do the ministry given to us in Christ.  So where is identity in this?  It’s all over.  Our identity is in the eternal not the temporal, rejection on earth is not important because we find love and acceptance in the eternal.

Helping Students think through this

Have students read verse 1-10 and ask these questions:

• What is death?  What happens to us when we die?
• One hundred years from now, when we are all no longer among the living, what will be our relationship to our friends?
• If we wer to say that our life here on earth in some ways prepares us for eternity future, what should we be doing with this life?

Have students read verses 11-15

• If we were to think of death as a doorway between what is temporary and what is eternal how should we live now?
• Considering that this life is temporary, and that the next life is eternal, where should we find our identity?  Which life should be more important?

Have students read verses 16-21

• What one thing stops you from telling your friends about Jesus?  Is it rejection?
• Should we find our identity and self worth in our friends or in Jesus?    Why do you think Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”?
• What friend are you going to try and have a conversation about Jesus with this week?

So what we would like from you is suggestions.  What are things you would want your kids to know, believe, and be able to do on a spiritual level?  What goals do you have for your own kids?