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1. Realise I am a Spiritual Being
2. Explore the Relevance of a Connection with God
3. Encounter the Person of Jesus as One Fully Connected with God
4. Discover how to Re-connect with God
5. Start a New Relationship with God
A Common Story
I was recently helping out at a weekly youth drop-in; only one teenager showed up. Ian* was 18 and had come along for a couple years now to kick the football around and shoot some pool. Occasionally we had group discussions about God, but Ian usually kept quiet and didn’t show a lot of interest in the conversation. Well, on this particular night I was surprised when Ian decided to stick around, despite the social awkwardness of being the only teenager around. We made small talk while shooting pool and then Gemma*, the other youth volunteer, and I started talking about God. The two of us had never really had a chance to get to know each other because of the usual noise and chaos. But on this night, we ended up having a half-hour conversation about how God first came into our lives and changed us. Ian listened quietly to the entire conversation (while thrashing me around the pool table).
I was so excited that Ian had been around to hear us talk openly and meaningfully about God. I was dying to know what he thought. So on the way out I asked, “What did you make of all that? That’s probably the most conversation you’ve heard about God in a long time, huh?”
“Yeah it was interesting,” he replied, followed by a long silence.
“So did it make you want to think about things some more?”
“Hmmm…I don’t know. I think it’s good that you have faith and that it’s helped you. I know it’s real for a lot of people. (silence again) But I’ve never been able to really see the point of it for me.”
And that was that. Ian didn’t say anything else.
What could I say? Gemma and I had just shared some of our most vulnerable experiences; God had brought healing from the loss of a loved one, acceptance in the midst of a painful broken relationship, peace and purpose to life. It was so real and so relevant. And yet Ian could not relate any of this to his own life. How could he miss it?
We spend most of our time in youth ministry trying to get teenagers interested in God in the first place, trying to help them start a spiritual journey. We often ask ourselves, ‘How do you help a young person in the 21st century come to faith? They just don’t see the real world connection of God to their own lives.’ We know many other Christians are asking these same questions. Like you, we are learning (and having to re-learn!) a lot as we go. We hope these thoughts add to the dialogue.
Our Past Experience
We were fortunate enough to receive lots of training during our formative years in how to share our faith. We sat in youth ministry classes at university and seminary and travelled for multiple summers on overseas mission teams. It was invaluable experience that grounded our relationship with God and gave us the courage to talk with others about God.
We were excited to put this training and experience into action as we moved to Bicester, England. We knew we would have lots of opportunities in the schools and community to talk with people about God, many of whom would be thinking about faith for the first time. We were ready to share the good news about Jesus, answer questions about the existence of God, objections to the credibility of the Bible and questions about the historical reality of the resurrection. Our expectations were met and exceeded as we almost immediately engaged in spiritual conversations and started to meet with young people to explore faith.
But a funny (actually very frustrating) thing started to happen as we engaged with these teenagers. We soon discovered they really didn’t have too many problems with the classic objections to the Christian faith. On the contrary, we found most teens have some level of faith in the existence of God. They accept a person named Jesus actually lived and probably rose from the dead and they have either a positive curiosity or at least neutral view of the Bible. So it seemed we were wasting a lot of time answering questions they did not have. How frustrating is that! We finally grew tired of answering questions people were not asking. We had to figure out a different way.
But we had never been trained to answer the type of question we kept hearing. That is, Why should faith mean anything to me? In fact on reflection, it seems to us that relevance is the key apologetical question of this generation. How do you connect teenagers who have grown up in a post-Christian culture with a God who seems so irrelevant?
Past Methods
How can we help lead teenagers toward faith in God? It’s good to ask what has been done before. I mean, why reinvent the wheel if someone has already figured this out?
We found we could not rely on our past experience or training, so what about going back to Jesus to see what we can learn. That seems like an appropriate place to start, yes? What did Jesus do? Encountering the person of Jesus has shaped how I share my faith. I see how to live in an attractive way, how to ask good questions and how to help people get off the fence. But the frustration I run into when I look at Jesus’ approach to people is this; Jesus was already starting with a primarily Jewish audience who were raised to believe in God. So there is a lot that just does not translate to the young people I work with. The teens I work with have not been raised to believe anything.
Ok, how about the Apostle Paul? His audience was primarily Greeks who did not know God, so maybe we can find some clues from him. Paul’s message to the Greeks in Athens continues to be used as a great example of how to lead people toward the gospel.
But I am again left questioning. Paul’s audience did not know God, but they did have spiritual beliefs, misguided beliefs to be sure, but at least it was a starting point. Paul was able to start with their belief in many gods and use that as a springboard to the gospel. But the teenagers we relate to typically have no developed spiritual beliefs.
Both Jesus and Paul’s methods leave me with nagging questions about how to share my faith effectively today. So what have others been doing? A quick look at the available evangelism tools and curriculum from the past 50 years or so until the present quickly reveals an emphasis on the ‘harvesting,’ or commitment stage. They help challenge people to commit to something they have some basic understanding of, but have not yet accepted personally.
In the UK less than 1% of teenagers attend church. It has been said there is ‘no residue’ of the Jesus story left among teenagers here today. So while they have heard of Jesus, they have no real understanding of him. In short, you cannot ask people to commit to someone they have never really met.
So the tools from the previous generations do not help young people start the journey. How about the recent emphasis on the need to present the Big Story or metanarrative of the Bible? This is a step in the right direction because it addresses the fact you cannot simply start with Jesus and expect people to understand the gospel. Instead, we have to go back to the beginning and tell the whole story of God’s plan to rescue humanity. In many ways, this is what Paul was doing in Athens. While I find this new emphasis helpful and one we use in grounding already Christians in their faith, it still seems like one step too far along to serve as a starting point. I need to know how to help people want to start the journey.
So is it hopeless to think we can help teenagers get interested in God and start a faith journey?
Stay tuned for Part 2, coming next week!
* Names have been change for confidentiality
Have you read True Story by James Choung
That was really interesting Darrin, I often feel that, that many teenagers do not have a basic knowledge of Christ, at school they learn about all faiths and will ask why yours and not the others? The world today just seems to go on without God I hear my youngest say.
The attractiveness of Jesus however is so key, in that eventually a young person will notice and question why you seem different.
It is really interesting to read how you are getting on, will continue to support in prayer.
Rosalind.
nteresting. Looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
My own thoughts are that British young people are not too different from the Celts before they were evangelised. There are many echoes of Celtic Britain in today’s society. It’s not that young people don’t believe in anything. Most would probably tell you they are quite ‘spritual’. Most of my teens’ non-Christian friends have belief systems very similar to what might be considered Pagan, or Pre-Christian.
I think parts of the UK now look very much like PRE-Christian Celtic Britain (forget Post-Christian) and so we might have a lot to learn from how the missionaries to the Celts did their work so effectively: They established communities of ‘worship, prayer and learning and service’.
For this generation, where the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘community’ are so fuzzy, demonstrating a community (or home or family) which believes in those 4 things can have a powerful impact.
The wonderful thing about the Celts is that they were a very fertile mission ground. So, we can be hopeful about the future.
Just some scattered thoughts.
-Dorothy
Nice Job Bro! You are so talented in so many areas. I can’t wait to read all of your wisdom regarding these questions we have been pondering in our own youth ministry. We have come to the unfortunate conclusion that youth ministry here in the states has become very similar to your ministry in the UK. Can you send me your answers now….I won’t tell anyone?!?!
Hi everyone, thanks for reading the article so far and your comments! I will be really keen to hear your thoughts when the next section comes out as it talks through what we have been trying out. (Julie, you will have to keep waiting :)
I haven’t read True Story yet, Robert, but will look at that.
Dorothy, I really like your thoughts about Celtic culture! i think Joy may have mentioned it on facebook, but i just read a short chapter about Patrick (the St. one) and was REALLY surprised and excited by the movement among young people that God started through him. I think you are right that western culture now is resembling the spiritual climate of Celtic Britain.
And I do think that faith will be discovered, lived out and grown more and more as we set up communities of faith like the ones you mentioned happened in Celtic Britain.
So what does it look like to set up these kinds of communities today? And how can we envision a whole new generation of young people that they can actually lead in these types of communities. Lots to learn…
Darin asked, ‘And how can we envision a whole new generation of young people that they can actually lead in these types of communities.’
I’m not sure I understand your question exactly. But I’ll take a stab at it :-)
I’m working from the point of view of a parent, not a youth minister or a community leader, so my perspective is not that of someone who is trying to shape a whole generation, just the ones God has entrusted to me and my husband and those we come across during the course of that primary mission. (Which, I guess, in the course of a child’s journey to adulthood is a LOT of people!)
So, from that perspective then, we look to how Jesus discipled the 12. That is where we see ‘what that looks like’. He lived with them, ate with them, talked to them, told them when they were talking nonsense, served them, walked along the road with them, taught them, prayed with them, modelled the behaviour he expected of them and sacrificed everything for them. Not just the final sacrifice of the cross but the day to day sacrificial moments of life being lived alongside them.
That model of discipleship is the one that parents of teens need to follow. That’s what speaks so loudly to them and their pre-Christian friends.
If we learn from the early missionaries to the Celts, such a fertile mission ground, what we see is them creating communities of Worship, Prayer, Learning and Service. So, as a parent, this is what I work so hard to create in my home and family. The decisions we make about what to spend our time and money on reflect our commitment to those 4 activities.
Thanks for the opportunity to express some of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, Darin.
i think you are right, Dorothy about our role as Christian parents and daily living it out. Also I think the experiences/traditions you do with your family like the Shabot meal are something Christian families need to do more intentionally as we try to spiritually form our children!
I still wonder with the majority of young people not growing up in a Christian family how they will experience this ‘being with’ factor of discipleship and community. It probably means we as Christian families and we as a church need to think more about how to include young people in our own family/faith community rhythms.
Then as far as multiplying Worship, Prayer, Learning Service communities hopefully that is something that young people can recreate as they go out from the home to school, university, work and beyond.
really fun dialogue…
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Darin, it strikes me that churches/communities have a lot to learn from families that have been successful in promoting the Christian faith with their children. By the way, I’m not referring to ours because we’re not ‘finished yet! :-)
A church will talk a lot about ‘being a family’ but mostly, we’ve found that to be merely lip service to the concept. A real family would love its members equally, but give more attention/resources to its most spiritually vulnerable members. In most cases, this means children’s/youth work and also work among the poorest/vulnerable adults/those with addictions etc would be prioritised. But in reality, they rarely are.
There’s also two different ‘youth’ problems which need to be approached, aren’t there? 1. How do we stop the heamorrhage of children and young people from the church, who are going there with their Christian parents, but are leaving at rates of thousands per week? and
2. How do we reach those with NO Christian background with the Gospel?
We probably come at these problems from different angles, given our own backgrounds. My feeling is that if the church was able to prevent its young people leaving, then it would be able to reach their friends. But it isn’t doing that.
From the Life-Songs point of view, we are doing it firstly to keep our own children’s faith strong. That’s our primary mission (our own kids). In the course of being faithful to *that* mission, we’ve somehow been able to attract others (Christian, non-Christian and waverers) to Jesus. But I don’t think that Life-Songs would have been as blessed as it has been, had our purpose not primarily been obedience to God’s first call on our lives, which was to proclaim God’s goodness to our own children.
Lots of different, but inter-related topics coming up, aren’t there? :-) I’d better stop.