 |
 |
      |
YOUTH MINISTRY
Will Our Youth Have Faith?
by Beverly CroweTipton
You can tell when children are entering adolescence by the pale expressions of fear on the faces of the adults in their lives. The wonderful children that have grown up being affirmed for their uniqueness and raised to be individuals are now claiming that uniqueness in ways their parents probably didn’t expect.
Fearful questions abound in the minds of caring adults. "Will they learn to study?" "Will they make it home safely?" "Will they have good relationships?" "Will they remember what we’ve told them?" "Will they love God?" "Will they have faith?"
Will they have faith? – of course they will – according to some definitions. The further questions concern the formation of their faith. In what will our teenagers choose to have faith? How will they acquire this faith? How will this faith affect their lives? We wish for simple solutions to such monumental questions. Often as their world becomes more abstract, we want to cling to what is concrete. However, as with most things concerning adolescents, the old dictum applies – for every big problem there is a simple solution and it is always wrong.
Simple solutions fall into two extremes. One extreme is to center teaching on the orthodoxy-right beliefs- of a teenager’s faith. If we teach teenagers to believe all the right things, in the right order, at the right time, they will have faith. The other extreme centers teaching an orthopraxy-right actions. If we teach teenagers to perform all the right actions, work for all the right causes, name all the right oppressors, then they will have faith. Neither extreme is faithful to the biblical witness or will work effectively with young people.
The Bible tells us of people who have neither the right beliefs nor the right actions. They are people learning through process. They are learning to live and work together. They make mistakes and sometimes they learn from them. They are learning to be people of God. In the process, they are forming faith both individually and corporately. For them and for us, right beliefs and actions are products of this process.
Though there are no simple solutions or concrete answers, here are some simple reminders as you work to help young people in process of becoming people of faith.
Adolescent spirituality is often characterized by a need to reject traditional religious behaviors and institutions. Take care to support their faith search – taking away choices can jeopardize youths’ opportunities for personal ownership in the formation of spirituality. This period of questioning is the initial attempt to move beyond borrowed faith to one that is their own and one that is more mature. Do not be discouraged. Their questioning is a positive act of faith.
Like all of us, young people are also people in process. Community is extremely important to them, but they are learning for the first time how to claim a faith of their own. What we hope for teenagers is that they develop a faith that is not their Sunday School teachers’ or their parents’ or even their friends’, but a faith that is individual and unique to their relationship with God.
|
|
|
|
