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Sally sat on her deck pondering whether to have sex with her boyfriend, Bob, this Friday night. He had laid down the law: "Either we have sex or we are finished." What does she do?

A voice deep in her heart says, Don't! But another says, Yes. Everyone's doing it. Sally went to her church to talk to John, her youth pastor. She had not been to church in a long time, and John got stuck on why she hadn't been around lately. He talked about going to Six Flags. It would be a blast. When John finally got around to asking Sally why she had come to see him, she felt his main interest in her was to increase numbers at his programs. She just left with a promise she would try to come to more things. Ironically, his last words were, "See you Friday night at Fifth Quarter?"

Friday night? Sally winced. The church was no help.

She called her father to see if they could, like old times, have a date to talk. Dad was busy preparing for a trip while three people were waiting to see him. "Dad," she said, "this is important." In a regretful moment he shot back, "Sally, you are so selfish. You only think of yourself." Sally hung up, hoping her dad would call her back. He never did.

She found her mom at home in the kitchen getting ready to go to the supermarket. "Mom, can we chat?"

"Sure, Sweetie," her mother replied.

As Sally began to talk, her mom's cell phone rang. Sally listened as her mother made an appointment with the beauty parlor. When she finally got off the phone, Sally tried again. But before Sally could begin, her mother wanted to know if Sally had completed the to-do list they had created. Sally hadn't. Her mother then proceeded to preach to her about responsible behavior and teamwork. Then her mother abruptly stopped and said she had to go to the supermarket. She tossed off "It was good talking with you, Sally!" and headed for the door.

"Mom!" Sally cried, "Why the rush?" Her mom said she had a to-do list a mile long and she had to get to it. This was her time to buy food for her dinner party Friday night. She told Sally that she might want to find something to do Friday night, because a bunch of old people would be at the house. Sally sadly said, "Thanks. I already have plans for Friday."

Sally was looking for help but could not find it. She needed her church and parents to walk with her, but they wouldn't or couldn't. She was left angry and lonely, abandoned by her church and family. And she was going to have to make the most important decision of her life--alone. What would she do?

Is it any wonder that the world of kids like Sally is in turmoil? As William J. Bennett noted in his book, The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators: Facts and Figures on the State of American Society, the number of teenagers becoming pregnant has doubled in the last two decades. The suicide rate has tripled. The number of violent crimes committed by that age group has also tripled.

Craig Barnes, in his book Sacred Thirst, suggests that the demons of materialism, racism, alcoholism, drug abuse, and loneliness are devouring our young. He says parents in their frustration ask the church to fix their kids. However, Dr. Barnes points out the best the church seems to be able to do is to argue about the youth director, the program, and all the external things that keep them from dealing with the real issues. They spend half their time responding to the complaints of desperate parents.

So the parents panic and the church argues and hardly anyone hears the cry of our kids. However, if we listen we will hear clearly what our children are asking from their parents and from their church.

To Their Parents, Kids Want to Say …

It's not about you. Teenagers are on a journey to try to figure out who they are, what they believe, and if they really do matter. As much as they love their parents, they need space in order to do this. That need for space is not a rebellion against parents or what they believe. It is simply saying that to get where the kids are going, they need to travel some roads alone. While they do this, they need parents to trust them and walk not far away.

You can't fix everything. Parents sometimes become frantic and try to fix their children's lives. They don't want them to suffer, so they interject themselves into their children's lives. It's easy to begin to enmesh themselves with their children and become overly protective. This can have two devastating effects. It can suffocate the child and destroy their spirit, or it can cause an active and aggressive rebellion. Then parents criticize. They criticize the church for not having programs that their children like. They criticize the school for its lack of rules. They become angry with coaches when their children don't make first string. They constantly criticize their children, but have a hard time listening to others who point out their child's weaknesses and offer constructive ways to help. Parents may block the child's journey to independence from parents and dependence on Jesus.

Please love each other. Kids need parents to love each other. Parents must not neglect their own relationship, for it is the relationship between parents that creates the atmosphere in the home, the place that must be emotionally safe for kids. Parents are mistaken if they think all that matters is if they individually love their kids. Kids do need to have their own relationship with each parent, even amid a divorce. However, even more important than the love parents have for a child is the love they have for each other. When parents neglect each other, they do serious damage to their child's spiritual and emotional development. In a post-modern world, where the stress of both parents working can divide husband and wife, parents must work hard in their tiredness to live out their wedding vows each day.

We need to see your love for God. It has been said, "I would rather see a sermon than hear one." The parents who preach Jesus must be sure to follow him themselves. If they preach compassion and grace, they should show their love and tolerance. If they preach presence, they need to be around; if they preach obedience, they can't turn around and excuse themselves bending the rules.

Kids need to watch parents on their journey as they struggle to follow God. They need to witness their parents ask forgiveness and offer it, admit their failures and offer grace when others fail, and rely on Jesus to live the words they preach. If young people do not see this, they will likely label all adults hypocrites. Parents are not called to be perfect. In fact, their very vulnerability before their children can be a powerful gift to their child. This kind of living can come only as parents seek to develop their own personal relationship with Jesus Christ. As Jesus said to Martha in Luke 10, "This is the one needful thing."

We love to be with you, but our friends are important. Kids do enjoy being with adults, especially their parents. This is not only true of pre-adolescents, but also of adolescents. However, as kids are individuating, they need to not feel suffocated or that their thoughts and feelings are irrelevant. Parents must find a way to trust their children as emerging adults and offer space for them, yet still provide the structure that creates healthy boundaries and rules.

Kids also want us to value their friends and respect their right to choose friends. Parents who fail to give kids this kind of respect do serious damage to the parent-child relationship. Parents don't actually have to like their kids' friends; their task is simply to respect the teen's right to choose their own friends. Yes, there may be times when a parent must forbid a peer relationship, such as when the friend is involved in at-risk behavior such as drugs, sex, and alcohol. But this authority must be exercised with great care and concern to explain why. The important thing: Don't try to separate the child's friendships out of your personal dislike of the friend.

To the Church, Kids Want to Say…

Please help my parents understand me, love each other, and love God. The church has a great responsibility in partnering with parents in the adolescent task. The church can do this by equipping the parents to understand a child's developmental issues, the culture they live in, and the child's spiritual journey. Parenting seminars and programs for dads and moms, marriage seminars, and family camps are but a few ways that the church can open its ministry for kids.

In fact, youth ministry is the task of the whole church and not just the youth director. Thus a family-sensitive youth-ministry schedule is important, so that kids aren't out three or four nights a week (including weekends) to the detriment of the family. Since the primary responsibility for the spiritual formation of their kids rests in the family (Deuteronomy 6), a church must find ways that will allow families to flourish, instead of sacrificing the family for a big and growing youth ministry.

Please value me more than my attendance at your programs. Youth ministry, indeed all ministry, is about transformation of the heart more than it is about outward, observable behavior. Jesus made this clear in dealing with the Pharisees. Any youth can do all the right things in youth ministry, such as having a quiet time, attending church meetings, studying the Bible, and praying, and yet still not have his or her heart transformed by the Living God.

Churches sometimes tend to judge kids' spiritual life based on the meetings attended. This is a dangerous practice and can do great harm. Many kids are seeking help but are not attending youth meetings, and they need attention. Some kids are doing well in their walk with the Lord, but just don't attend many youth group meetings. They can quickly become judged as not having it all together. The reason programs become so important to youth ministries is that success is often judged by numbers, and thus the pressure to increase attendance. When numbers alone become the focus, a church inevitably misses the mark for the true task of youth ministry.

Please be an authentic community. Kids see more than we think, and our actions impact them more than we will ever know. Kids often feel abandoned by the church, and the best way to win them back is to be a caring, compassionate community that invites young people to be actively involved.

The tendency in the church is to separate kids from the rest of the Body of Christ. They have their own room, retreats, service projects, and socials. In worship, they sit together, usually in the balcony. So it's an uphill battle to include our kids, not alienate them. Yes, they need to have their own programs, but if that is all they have, they miss the experience of a total community. They're not meant to be the Mickey Mouse ears on the church.

As a caring community, the church becomes a safety net for kids and their families as together they try to walk the tightrope of adolescence. For this to happen, kids must be assimilated into the life of the church, and the church must know and understand kids, their families, and the world they live in.

As we seek to hear the cry of our kids, we need to remind ourselves that we are not perfect--not perfect parents or a perfect church. We can, however, seek to improve our ability to hear the cry of our kids and provide for them appropriate ministries.

As parents, we can remember that perfection is deadly but improvement possible. And in the final analysis, our kids belong to God. They are given to us as a sacred trust to love and equip them to live for Christ in the world.

As a church, we must partner with parents to equip them to know how to positively love their kids. The church must see itself as a community committed to building and supporting families. Time, prayer, energy, and strategic thinking must go into this endeavor, so that it will not be said of us "that there grew a generation who knew not the Lord." Rather, it will be said that by the grace of God, the hearts of parents were turned to their children and the children's hearts to their parents.

Parents and the church have a marvelous opportunity to learn to minister life to young people in the midst of a world that is seeking to destroy them. Kids live in a world of fear--fear of snipers, fear of terrorism, fear of loneliness, and fear of abandon-ment. This fear leads them to seek answers in unhealthy places and relationships.

Parents and the church have an opportunity to be a holy presence for young people. This presence is indeed the presence of Jesus and is the only force strong enough to bring kids into a meaningful and productive life. Parents and the church must take the holy step of asking God how they can be all he wants them to be as individuals and as the church for our precious children.

The Rev. Charles Neder has served as Director of PFR Youth Ministry since 1984, following youth and new-church-development pastorates in Washington, D.C. and South Carolina, and positions at Flagler College and McCallie School. He holds degrees from the University of Georgia, Columbia Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological Seminary where he recently earned a Doctor of Ministry degree. Chuck was one of the original team members of Fun in the Son, and a founder of The Great Escape, Son Servants, and Youth Workers Equipping Conference.

RELATED ARTICLES

Adolescent Individuation

The adolescent task is the task of individuation: healthy separation from parents. When young people enter adolescence, they are seeking to become their own person. They seek to determine:

* Identity: Who am I?

* Autonomy: Do I matter?

* Connecting: Where do I belong?

What may seem like rebellion or rejection of parents may really be a normal developmental process. If parents do not understand this, they can actually push their teenager into unhealthy places, when all the youth is trying to do is to individuate.

Consequences!

One of the greatest lessons parents teach their children is that behavior has consequences. Research indicates that mid-adolescents (14-17) often do not understand that. Thus they do things that are extremely harmful to themselves and others with no thought of the effect.

The task of parenting is to spend our time helping kids understand that their behavior does have consequences; therefore they must learn to think before they act. This process takes time and patience for parents and for kids. Kids will make mistakes. Parents need to use those mistakes as opportunities for growth, not condemnation. They are teaching their kids that the world does not revolve around them and their wants; they are part of a community. This is best learned in the context of a caring family.

PFR Youth Ministry: Introducing Jesus, Changing Lives

ReNEWS asked Elizabeth McClelland, a veteran of two Son Servants summer staffs, why she chose to do a graduate school internship with PFR Youth Ministry last year.

I stood on a mountaintop in Nicaragua looking up at the most beautiful starry night I have ever been blessed to witness and thought, God is so much bigger than anything I could ever begin to imagine. I was reminded of that time and again during that summer of 2001 as I served on the Son Servants staff: The Lord--his purpose and the way he works--is bigger than we can imagine. Son Servants had a tremendous impact on my life, so much that I returned the next year to do an internship for graduate school.

Son Servants, the missions branch of PFR Youth Ministry, gives high school and middle school students opportunities to participate in short-term mission trips. It is staffed by college students who raise their own support and come to serve the students and counselors. But we "summer staffers" find that we ourselves are served in ways we never thought possible.

I worked to build a church in Jamaica, mixed and poured concrete in Mexico, planted coffee and dug ditches in Nicaragua, and built a home for a family along the Texas-Mexico border. The work was hard, but that's not what I remember most. I remember being overwhelmed with God's love when a Jamaican woman in an infirmary held my hands and asked if she could pray for me. I remember the beautiful faces of children in each country placing their hands in mine, trusting and loving. I remember witnessing to students, and how some of them met Christ for the first time and made commitments to follow him. I remember the tears of a family whose dream of owning their own home, a one-room concrete structure, was finally realized. Most of all, I remember the things the Lord revealed to me about his character and about myself, and my renewed sense of call to serve others as Christ did.

Son Servants is a life-changing experience. I hope I will be able to continue to participate with Son Servants, a ministry that impacts the lives and hearts of students, leaders, staff, and brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world.

Elizabeth McClelland has returned to the University of Texas-Austin to pursue a masters degree in Public Affairs with a concentration in philanthropy, volunteerism, and nonprofit management. Her home church is First Presbyterian Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.