Imperative Growth for Parents of Teenagers

Building your relationship with Jesus is the most important thing you can do

I am going to do a series of posts specifically targeting parents of teenagers. My hope is that these posts will help grow and mature each of us in our faith as we parent our kids. The reality is kids become who their parents are in one way or another, so taking a deep introspective look at who we are will give us insight into who our kids will become.

Living the example of a Christ follower in front of our kids should not be the catalyst for living out our faith in our daily lives. This should be driven and motivated by a desire to better know our Savior, the one who died for the punishment of my sin. When the drive to live for Christ is all about being an example for our teenager, this simply becomes an exercise in futility. If we want to develop fully devoted followers of Christ, I think we must first be fully devoted followers of Christ.

When we live audacious faith, our kids are deeply influenced by that faith

I heard a story of a young teenage girl who was walking in rebellion from her folks. She was dating a guy who was obviously not good for her and was a force in her life to the point of influencing her to do negative things. Her father repeatedly tried to make things right with her and persuade her to end the relationship, but she was unwilling. They dated for a few years. During those few years, the father began to meet with another man. He kept asking the other man what he should do about his daughter. The advice given was, “Why don’t you do something with your faith that is meaningful? Why don’t you start actually living for Jesus?” It wasn’t that the man was living for himself or that he was living a horribly sinful life, it was that he was living an apathetic faith. He started a non profit that focused on having compassion for those in need. Two years into this successful venture, his daughter asked him if she could work for him. As they were sitting together one night, he asked her if she was still dating the young man. She said, “Dad, I knew that when you started living your faith, my boyfriend was not the one for me. I want to be with someone that lives on the edge, like you.”

It was an unintended consequence of truly living his faith, but his daughter saw the change in his life, she saw the issues that surrounded him and wanted to be a part of it. There is something compelling, something persuasive about someone actually living out what Jesus has done in their life!

If the 7 C’s are a description of a fully devoted follower of Christ, then shouldn’t we always be living in light of these?

For the next few days, I want to address what it means to have the characteristics of Christ present in our lives as parents. This is not a teaching/instruction blog, rather it is a dialogue. I would love to have any input from you as a parent on what you see as important in each of these areas. There are 7 C’s each of us could focus on in the area of our own spiritual growth. They allow us to be honest with ourselves and with each other as to whether we are growing towards Jesus or simply living apathetically within the realms of the four walls of our “safe” church. If we were to live “on the edge”, could we reach our culture for Christ? Could we change the statistics of teenagers that walk away from the church? Could we revolutionize society and the passionless world we live in?

I believe that we can. But it starts with our own growth, our own spiritual development. Hearing from God is not something that is easily definable or even explainable, but as we hear from God in these areas, let us be open to the idea that we may need to change the habits, the issues that confront us daily for the sake of our own relationship with Jesus with an intended consequence of how our teenagers will respond to Jesus Christ in the future.

A note about youth ministry at West E. Free

I believe deeply that parents and youth ministry must partner together. Teenagers are only influenced by the local church about four hours per week. Parents have the opportunity to disciple their kids 55-60 hours per week, so if discipleship is going to be effective and helpful to our teenagers, we must be willing to partner together. As I have processed what is most helpful in this area of partnership, it seems there are really two levels. The first is regarding our direct contact with the teenagers. At church we teach them specific topics, so informing you as to what your kids are learning is important. The other level of partnership is helping you as a parent learn and grow in the area of spiritual formation as well as parenting skills. Obviously, I don’t possess many of those parenting skills because I have not experienced what it means to parent a teenager. The spiritual formation section of partnership is where I want to focus my personal energy and then work to develop partnership between “seasoned” parents and “starting” parents. When this begins to happen, I think we will experience some intense transformation and partnership between church and the family.

If you have been in my office you know the wall is painted orange. What many of you don’t realize is that I actually dislike the color orange. It reminds me of some sort of carpet straight out of yesteryear. However, orange is speaking volumes to me each and every day. If family and church are represented by color, family would be considered “red” because it is a loving entity. It is a heart relationship of a family a loving, nurturing environment. And if church were a color, it would be yellow, the light of the world. When we blend the two colors, we create orange.  My office is orange so I might always be pushed to think of blending the church and family together to better disciple our young teenagers.

Are you in? Are you willing to do the hard work at home of being the “youth pastor” to your teenager? If we are willing as parents to do this, I believe our homes would be much less apathetic and scary and much more alive and vibrant in the world of faith and values. I am not saying this will be easy, but I am saying it could be extremely rewarding to join in this blending of family and church.

 

Advertisement