ParenTeen: The Most Spiritual Time of the Year
December 21, 2010
It’s the most spiritual time of the year, but are our teens “getting” it? What should spiritual maturity actually look like on our teens? Another Christmas is here and another Christmas will go by. In the past 365 days, have you seen your teen grow in any of these ares? Do a two-minute checklist; this is what we can hope for.
Mature Christian young people:
- Seek spiritual growth, both alone and with others; they pursue questions, guidelines, and commitment through conversation, study, bible reading, prayer, small groups, retreats, etc.
- Are keenly aware of God, and view God as active and present in their own lives, in the lives of others, and in the world.
- Act out of a commitment to faith in Jesus Christ, privately and publicly, through regular worship, participation in ministry, and leadership in a congregation.
- Make Christian faith a way of life by recognizing God’s “call” and integrating their beliefs into conversation, decisions, and actions in daily life.
- Live lives of service by being involved in caring for others and addressing injustice and immorality.
- Reach out to others who are different or in need through prayer, hospitality, conversation and support.
- Exercise moral responsibility by living with integrity and utilizing faith in making considered moral decisions.
- Speak publicly about faith by speaking openly about Jesus Christ and God’s participation in their own lives and in the world.
- Possess a positive, hopeful spirit toward others and toward life.
Which point can you have a conversation about with your teen or plan an activity around over the Christmas break? There is no better time of year than now to having some focused spiritual conversations with your teen. Use time in the car, time before bed, or time at the dinner table to ask your teens about what God is doing in their lives. Share what God is doing in your life.
This info was taken from a chapter in “Almost Christian: What the faith of our teenagers is telling the American Church,” a book I am currently reading.
I’m going to be picking my way through this new brand new book by Kendra Creasy Dean (here on amazon). She’s an associate professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, and she spent 3 years researching the faith of teens in America. Here are some of the first sentences that stick out to me as I open up the book and get into the first chapter, “Becoming Christian-ish.”
American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith–but it does not concern them very much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduate from high school. Not the first time I’ve heard that, but it still hurts to hear it said do bluntly. Kara Powell and her team/work over at FYI have come to much the same conclusions about the future faith of teens, and how 50% will stop practicing their faith after leaving high school.
One more thing: we’re responsible. Ouch again, cause it points the finger right back at me. I’m the youth director, an adult member of my church, and Dean points the finger back at me. Now, I could say that I think I’m doing a pretty good job at providing a safe environment for teens to talk, and that I lead them into God’s Word regularly, and that I help get them plugged into serving regularly. But honestly, I’m still scared to death that the teens I have been pouring into are going to graduate, leave Shoal Creek, and be more attracted to the world than to the faith I am displaying here at “home.”
We have successfully convinced teenagers that religious participation is important for moral formation and making nice people…Yet these young people possess no real commitment to or excitement about religious faith. Teenagers tend to approach religious participation, like music and sports, as an extracurricular activity: a good, well-rounded thing to do, but unnecessary for an integrated life. Reminds of this article: Your Kid’s an All-Star? 10 Ways to Make Your Kids Apathetic of Their Faith.
The faith most teens exhibit is a loveless version that the NSYR (National Study of Youth and Religion) calls Christianity’s “misbegotten stepcousin,” Moralistic Therapeutic Deism…” I have to break that down. Moralistic = Be Nice. Therapeutic = Therapy, or making yourself feel better. Deism = God, so, all together translated, our teens exhibit a faith where the ultimate goal is to be nice to others so that you’re a better person. No where in that definition of faith is the self-sacrificing, giving-away-of-self love, that Jesus Christ exemplified. And I’m think that’s where this book is going to head next.
What Then Do Teens Need?
October 14, 2009
Here are some definitive assessments and concluding statements on what exactly teens need, from Chap Clark in Hurt. The last chapter, after this one, will focus on five strategies for “turning the tide of systematic abandonment”.
1. Youth need re-focused, nurturing organizations and programs. “Nurturing” is the key word there. Most organizations and programs that exist for our teens are designed to make our teens successful, and not on nuturing our teens. There is a difference. Because we base “success” on measurable achievement (i.e. playing time, grades, amount of involvement in extracurricular activity), our teens are under too much pressure, over-taxed, and relationally starved. And when our teens, by the fore-mentioned definition, fail to be “successful” our organizations and programs fail our teens altogether.
Our programs (church included!) need to redefine what goals we have set for our youth, and seek to understand whether our goals for them are in our best interest, or theirs.
2. Youth need a stable and secure loving presence. This is referring to the family environment. When a teen does not live in a safe, stable family environment, their survival instincts will kick in, forcing them to build protective walls against the pain that their family members could potentially inflict. It’s extremely important to realize that our families and homes do not have to be obviously dangerous to still not be safe. Physical danger, aggressiveness, abuse–these are all the real, yet stereotypical signs of an unsafe home. Other factors that make a home unsafe in just as dangerous ways include: over-scheduling and busyness, lack of curious parents/parent figures that ask questions and get to know their sons/daughters, in-authenticity, lack of boundaries, to name a few.
A safe home environment is built by a committed parent/parent figure that genuinely desire to understand the full depth of their son/daughter. With that understand can come an empathy that makes the relationship more meaningful and fulfilling.
3. Youth need to experience authentic, intimate relationships with adults. Raising youth and helping teens enter healthily into adulthood takes more than just the nuclear parents. It takes deep, meaningful, consistent interactions with adults in the community.
From Clark: The only way we can stem the tide of the consequences of abandonment is to encourage a wide variety of adults to take part in the lives of the young. Nothing else will make a difference–not more baseball fields, more programs and events, or more job opportunities…the answer is relationships with adults who sincerely care. That is the sole need of this abandoned generation.
Why “Party” is Important in the Lives of Our Adolescents
October 13, 2009
The answer to this is surprisingly obvious, and it brings with it a disappointment in my heart as an adult because I think we could definitely do something about it.
Some quotes from Chap Clark, in Hurt:
Parties are not about the party but about the longing for community.
…everyone needs to belong to a story larger than their own.
Adolescents are hungry for a transcendent experience that provides meaning, hope, adventure and carefree celebration.
We have taught our young that they need a mind-numbing substance to find the courage to relate to one another, and we have created a structure in which we advertise their need for it and provide access to it. (mainly meaning that a teen cannot escape desiring alcohol because of an alcohol-drenched society, expressed through TV, Movies, Music, Media, and the adults they see abusing alcohol on a regular basis)
Our teens are over-extended in their desire to party because of how deeply they long for true community. Their deep desire to relate in meaningful ways to the people and world around them makes them excited to just plain get together with the people they enjoy. Teens have a natural desire to celebrate life and enjoy their experiences.
I’m trying to think about what this means to me in an applicable way when relating with teens. I think it means that the teens I know, and my adult community knows, would be less likely to put themselves in potentially harmful situations if I/my adult community could feed their need for celebration. And celebration ought to be easy for me to provide for a teen since I am a Christ-follower.
Teens gravitate to the Party Scene because it promises to give them a chance to express themselves freely, without condemnation, in the presence of the people they care about. Teens will never be able to overcome their desire to “party” because it’s a natural, God-given desire. All of us desire to freely express ourselves in meaningful community. That’s the definition of party right there.
When’s the last time you, me, whatever family you’re in, has celebrated together in a meaningful way?
Examples: going to your favorite sports game together, gone out to the movies on a family night, had a game night at home, gone to a concert together? Celebration is about letting down walls and freely relating and enjoying each others’ presence.
Creating celebration opportunities as a family and community healthily feeds the party animal that rightly exists in our teens.
Teen Ethics and Morality
October 5, 2009
There is one thing to be understood about teen morals, teen ethics, and the internal right vs. wrong struggle that teens navigate through. The cornerstone in a teen’s ethical foundation is this: Self-protection. Avoidance of negative outcomes, in friendships and in family.
A quote from Chap Clark in his book Hurt: All students…when they find themselves in a position in which a lie would be the easiest route to self-protection, will lie just as easily as the next kid.
Another: [...teens] believe they must be in a constant mode of self-protection. A strong survivalist mentality exists just under the surface for many students, affecting their ability to move toward more advanced stages of development, especially moral development.
Our teens are growing up in a world where Trust is a luxury. The constantly shifting landscape of “who is going to love them”, the lack of stable, long lasting and healthy relationships in their lives, has given our teens an uncanny, Darwinistic ability to interact with choices in a survival of the fittest mode. “Protect self at all cost.” Just like a starving man steals a loaf of bread, the choice to lie, or cheat, or whatever does not seem wrong, but justified, to a teen.
In other words, to a teen, a lie might be a lie, but if they are lying to keep from getting hurt, then it’s ok to do. A lie, in and of itself, is not seen as inherently wrong. If you’re lying to hurt someone, that’s different; that’s wrong. But if you lie to keep from getting grounded, or if you lie so that your teacher doesn’t find out that you cheated, then that doesn’t really hurt anybody and that’s ok.
I just want to bridge that trust gap. That’s what I feel driven to. Students lie, and have an increasingly eroding moral foundation because they don’t feel they have trustworthy relationships to lean on. They believe their worth depends on themselves, the image they can create for themself. So many students are afraid to really be themselves that they have to lie to keep up their image, to friends and adults.
If only we could create a community where students didn’t feel like they have to lie to be loved. If only our students were so confident in our relationships with them that they felt the freedom to tell us when they’ve failed and not make excuses for where they’ve fallen short.