Equip Teens To Stay Faithful To Jesus (Forever)

How do you equip teens to stay faithful to Jesus in a culture that’s increasingly more hostile to Christianity?

Great question, and I think it’s one that we’re thinking about more often these days because of the changing climate and culture around us.

I would say, however, that it’s important that we distinguish this. You’ll have those folks in your church that say to your kids, or you if they find out you’re a youth pastor, “Oh, I couldn’t imagine raising a kid in today’s world,” or “I would never wanna bring a kid into a world like this,” and I’m thinking, “Really?” When the book of Romans was written and read to that church, the families had to hold their kids’ hands and walk past the coliseums where Uncle Tommy, (who probably wasn’t named Tommy) was killed by lions. They had to walk by and cover their eyes from temple prostitutes and things like that.

We’re not the first culture to face these kinds of challenges, so I think there are a lot of things that we can learn from the Scripture to be equipped to do so. I would say three brief things:

1. Equip Them Apologetically

Yes, equip them apologetically, but also convictionally.

I think sometimes we err on one side or the other, there’s a big movement now to equip students apologetically, which I think is great. Give them a reason for the hope that is within them, so that they can give an answer. But many of our college students, young adults who are criticizing the faith that they grew up in, are saying no one was willing to answer their questions. I think getting to an apologetics study is very valuable. But if all you do is learn apologetically, then you’re missing the other side of the coin, and that is equipping convictionally.

Aim for the heart, give them opportunities to practice what it is that they’re doing. We have a dangerous disposition in the church today where we just heap knowledge on top of knowledge.

All we’re doing is making smarter sinners.

We need to be making opportunities for them to do what James says, be doers of the Word, not hearers only. So equip apologetically and convictionally.

2. Help Them Connect with the Church

Pretty simple, but what I mean by that is not just connecting with the church, what I mean is connect with the church—not just the student ministry.

If someone were to ask the teenagers in your group, where do you belong to? Where do you go? If they name the student ministry, not the church, then you’ve got a problem on your hands. They need a community of intergenerational believers to help them.

That same community will drive them either to endure, to remain faithful, or to back away from the faith altogether.

I see this all the time — college students going in that freshman year, the stereotypical Christian movies and songs and the stories that people tell are always about that one atheistic professor that just comes in and wrecks the faith of thousands of teenagers. That may happen to a few, but most of the teenagers that I’ve known have walked away from the faith because they got involved with a group of friends who started doing things that they wanted to do. Then, they had to change their theology and their conviction to match their actions.

If we’re going to curb that, it means that we need to connect them with a larger community that’s going to help them to stand strong.

3. Expose Them to Challenges

Expose them to challenges and tough questions ahead of time.

Ask the questions ahead of time, and bring up the scenarios ahead of time. If a teenager in your group asks a question, they are ready for an answer. If you put them off and don’t give them an answer, what are they going to do? Well, they’re going to Google it, right? They can find that answer a million other ways, they don’t have to have an adult or a leader or a wise person. So give them an answer, that doesn’t mean you have to give them every detail of the answer, but you can give them an answer.

Give them guidance and support and expose them to some of those ideas earlier, so that you can shepherd them through processing those ideas and those challenges.

Connect Them With a Mentor

The last thing I would say is, while doing that, set them alongside a mentor to help them engage the culture and all of this hostility. Through that, they can learn to do it in a way that’s biblically sound, but also kind and loving. That’s something that is hard to pick up from a book or a discipleship study, but having people who meet those needs and challenges and stand firm, remaining faithful, they are the best to emulate.

The ones that are best to emulate are the ones that lead with kindness, love, compassion, and conviction. When they have those relationships in the church, I think it’ll help them go to that next step.

This panel discussion question was discussed during a previous youth ministry conference. Click here to listen to the entire panel discussion (of 6+ questions).