It has been almost 15 years since I first started spending intentional time serving teenagers. Through camps, retreats, churches, and schools, God has gifted me with some incredible opportunities to come alongside students between the ages of 12-24, know them deeply, and bear witness to the activity of God in their lives. What this also means is that I have walked with parents through some of the most significant moments of their teenagers’ lives—the good moments, the not-so-good moments, and the devastatingly tragic moments.
Over the years there are two desires I have heard parents express more than any other. First, they long to have a meaningful relationship with their son or daughter, and second, they ache for their son or daughter to know Jesus. Maybe—hopefully—if you are a parent of an adolescent, you resonate with these twin desires. Perhaps you aren’t a parent at all, but you play a key role in the life of a teenager and can also identify with these aspirations.
It is not uncommon for even those who hold these desires most strongly to admit that they wouldn’t know the first thing about where to start. Nor is it uncommon for well-meaning adults to think they know precisely where to start, only to find their efforts seem to be creating an adverse effect in that young person’s life.
Perfect Formulas and Clean Fixes
Whenever I am approached with questions about the best approach, there are a couple of encouragements I usually give parents. I begin by reminding them that there is no perfect formula for raising adolescents who will both like us and love Jesus. I have witnessed students from even the worst circumstances develop a vibrant faith in Jesus, and I have witnessed students from even the best circumstances with parents who are incredibly intentional, reject their family and their faith altogether.
There are also no clean fixes. Relationships are dynamic and they can be messy. You will lose your cool. You will do your best, and your son or daughter still might not respond well to you or Jesus. No approach to forming teenagers comes with a money back guarantee, and I do what I can to encourage parents to let God alleviate the pressure they may feel to do things perfectly and free them from the regrets that shame’s voice so often whispers.
A Starting Point
That said, I also encourage parents that there is a foundational starting place that seems to bear the most fruit, most of the time, over time. And it is this: if you want adolescents to know the gospel, embody it to them. For parents of teenagers who want to see their kids discover a personal experience with Jesus, it is vital to model the gospel to them as much as—if not more than—explaining the gospel to them. We could even say that students should experience the gospel through us before they hear the gospel from us.
Everything I can gather from the traditions of Scripture, spiritual formation, interpersonal neurobiology, adolescent development, and personal experience with teenagers strongly suggests that hearing about the mercy of Jesus from parents from whom mercy is rarely received, being told about the affection of Jesus by parents whose affection is seldom felt, and being reminded of their sin by parents who scarcely admit fault can create unstable footing for students to really trust the person and work of Jesus.
If you want adolescents to know the gospel, embody it to them. While there are many ways to embody the gospel to teenagers, the three listed below have emerged as particularly significant in my conversations with families over the years.
If you want adolescents to understand Jesus, seek first to understand them.
The gospel begins with a God who knew us and wanted us before the foundation of the world. We might remember the moment when Hagar is compelled to name Yahweh “The God Who Sees Me.” And who could forget the dangerous prayer in Psalm 139 that God would search us and know our hearts. Perhaps this is why Paul catches himself in Galatians 4 and equates knowing God with being known by God.
There is one complaint I have heard more than any other from students: “My parents don’t understand me.” Regardless of the circumstances surrounding these statements, the feelings expressed are valid and serve as a signal that one of the most important things we can do with adolescents is go above and beyond in our efforts to make them feel felt.
As we say often at Christ Community, all human beings long to be seen, soothed, safe, and secure; these needs and aches reach a critical stage in the teenage years, and making an adolescent feel like we are at least trying to get in their brain goes a long way in helping them experience the God who sees them clearly, knows them fully, and loves them deeply. If you want your adolescents to understand Jesus, seek first to understand them.
If you want to teach your adolescents, lead the way by learning from them.
The gospel showcases a God who bends low, seeks to serve rather than be served, and humbles himself, even to the point of death. Fascinatingly, the Scriptures teach that Jesus learned obedience through his suffering; indeed, he learned what it is like to be human through the incarnation so that he could empathize with us in our weakness. Luke even tells us that Jesus both learned from and reasoned with the religious leaders in the temple at just 12 years old. This scene may lend a particular poignance to the moment when Paul tells Timothy not to let anyone look down on him because of his youth.
Whatever the case, the reality is that learning from your teenager will teach them a lot. There is something disarming that happens when a student expects to be lectured or dismissed by an authority figure who instead bends low to glean from them. Such a posture of humility and lifelong learning speaks volumes about the way we view ourselves in relationship to young people.
If we really pay attention, young people have a treasure trove of things to teach us. Look for the thing that makes their eyes light up when they start talking about it—it could be a trivial interest, cultural awareness, a subject they care deeply about, a bit of theology they are wrestling with, a relationship they are working out, something they are discovering about themselves—look for that thing, lean in, and listen with humble curiosity. If you want to teach your adolescents, lead the way by learning from them.
If you want your teenager’s behavior to change, delight in them before it does.
The gospel is beautiful to many of us because it shows that God takes great delight in us before he requires change from us. In fact, it was while we were still his enemies that he died for us. He was willing to give himself up for us before anything was transformed in us. Zephaniah 3 is a beautiful reminder that God delights in his people with an anticipatory joy—his eyes light up to see us, and he loves nothing more than being with us, even when we are at our worst.
Adolescents will internalize what others believe about them and speak over them, especially important adults or authority figures. These things have tremendous power to form the way they act and think. So one of the most important ways we embody the gospel to teenagers is by being with them even when they aren’t doing what we would have them do, delighting in them even before they change troublesome behaviors, refusing to walk out of the room on them even when they are at their worst. There is a vital security we can provide students when they know that they do not have to act or think a certain way as a prerequisite for our affection. Being beloved provides a far stronger motivation to grow and change than fearing rejection. If you want your teenager’s behavior to change, delight in them before it does.
Exploring Our Own Inner Lives
Neurobiologist Dan Siegel wrote a book called Brainstorm, and the subtitle is, The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. One of Siegel’s primary points is that the teenage brain is not something simply to control, suppress, or survive; it is something to understand, navigate, harness, and help unleash. Early on in the book, he makes a fascinating observation: perhaps some of the things that frustrate us about students are really things we admire about students. I want to close this blog with a quote from the book that resonated deeply with me the first time I read it:
I wonder if some of the tension I see in parents as a reaction toward adolescents is at times a deep longing for these very features they themselves may have lost. Not having an emotional spark can make a teen’s exuberance threatening. Not being socially engaged can make an adult feel disconnected in the face of a teen’s social life. How many new friends did we make at ages thirty, forty, or fifty? All the drive for new things in an adolescent’s life can make an adult’s daily routines seem dull. And the creative explorations that drive a teen into all sorts of new ways of thinking and behaving can make the humdrum and predictability of adult life at times seem too controlled and too limiting. Perhaps if adults could recapture some of this vital essence the gap between the generations would lessen. What I mean by this is that sometimes what we see in others can remind us of what we are missing in ourselves, and this reminder makes us frustrated, disappointed, angry, or sad…if we take a deep breath and realize we are all lifelong learners, then an adult’s intense emotional reaction to a teen, for example, can serve as a reminder for us to explore our own inner lives and not simply react outwardly.
