Do We Expect More of our Christian Teens Than we Expect of Ourselves?

Recently an older post of mine, 5 Steps to Raising a Teen Who will Stay Christian, has received a lot of traffic on Pinterest, and revived some old debates.

In that post, I noted that children of Christian parents who went to Christian schools or were homeschooled were far more likely to still embrace Christ as adults than were kids who went to public schools. I had some push back in the comments from people saying that you really shouldn’t shelter your kids, and the public schools need them there to be missionaries anyway.

I understand that point of view, but two other events lately have made me wonder if we ask more of Christian teens than we would ever ask of ourselves.

1. Several people I know recently quit jobs and took new ones because they found their work environment toxic

2. A youth group I know has fallen on hard times because the vision has become blurry

Let me explain how both of these things relate, by looking at the pressure we often put on Christian teens.

We say to them: “You are the light of the world. You need to be a light in your high school. Go there and minister, even if the culture is completely anti-Christian, even if you are mocked, even if you are bullied, even if you have no friends.”

Now, we may not say that in so many words, but many kids have very toxic schools, and they can’t escape. If adults had to spend all their time in an environment with people who chose very different lifestyles, who pressured them to do things they didn’t want to do, and where they had little in common with anybody, those adults would likely leave. As I said, I know several adults who have recently left jobs behind because the environment was just too toxic.

We have the luxury of doing that. Kids do not. It’s very difficult to change public high schools. And so if you’re in a bad environment as a teen, you’re stuck. Now, not all teens have horrible high school experiences. My husband certainly didn’t, and I got through school simply by focusing more on my part-time jobs and ignoring the kids I went to school with. Yet there’s no doubt that many kids find high school extremely emotionally difficult, largely because the culture is so antithetical to what they believe.

What about saying, “yes, but it’s a mission field?” That’s certainly valid. But here’s the thing: the adults who spend all their time among people who disagree, and who have very different lifestyles, and who are difficult, tend to be missionaries. They aren’t “regular” adults, because the “regular” adults tend to take jobs with people who are like them, or at least whom they find friendly and interesting.

Now, I do believe in missions and outreach, but we don’t require all adults to do this full-time. We do, however, ask it of teens. We ask them to go into what is more or less a very hostile environment for them, their entire working day, while we do not ask the same of ourselves.

My kids do not go to public high school, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t spend any time witnessing. I can’t go into too much detail on a public blog, but let’s just say that they each are involved in part-time jobs and extracurricular activities where they talk a lot about God to people who aren’t Christian. They do what we ask adults to do; they just simply aren’t immersed in a negative culture 100% of the day.

Here’s another thing: when we send out adult missionaries, we train them for it. They expect opposition, and they learn to deal with it. When we send out teens into a negative environment, we expect them to handle it, even though they are only teens, and they aren’t yet adults.

Then, if teens struggle, I’ve heard people say the equivalent of, “we can’t take them out, because they need to be missionaries“. That doesn’t wash with me, because we don’t even ask ADULT Christians to do that. (whether or not we should ask adults to do that is another story). So if your teen is really struggling in high school, or is becoming very depressed, then we parents should take that under consideration, rather than feeling that they should suck it up because it’s a mission field.

But that’s not the only problem with the way we’re raising Christian teens. When adults are involved in a church community, we expect to be fed. We form small groups so that we can talk with other adults about Scripture, and pray for each other, and wrestle through the hard things in life. Then we also have outreach activities. We reach out to neighbours and invite them to church. We volunteer in the community. In short, we do both. We get fed, but we also do outreach.

When it comes to teens, though, we often ignore the “feeding” part. Most churches see youth groups as one of their main outreach platforms. We want to get as many teens out to youth group as possible, so we make it a fun, relevant night for teens in general. We don’t go deep into Scripture. We just present the gospel, or a watered down version of it, so that other kids will feel comfortable. Our main emphasis is on helping non-churched kids feel comfortable.

Again, this is a very worthy and important goal. If a church is not involved in outreach, then the church will die, and it is not fulfilling the mission that Jesus set for us in Matthew 28:19-20. But if you look more carefully at those verses, it is not only about outreach. Jesus said:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the end of the age.

We are to do outreach, but we are also to feed those who have already accepted Christ. We are to do both. When youth groups are too focused on outreach, then those who want to go deeper with Christ often don’t have a place where they can study the Scripture or ask the hard questions. And so these kids flounder, and become otherwise disillusioned.

Most churches are too focused on adult growth and not enough on adult outreach. We let adults in the pews have it pretty cushy. We go to small groups and Bible studies and have friends and don’t really do enough reaching into the community.

But at the same time, I think we ask too much of our teens. We ask them to focus only on outreach, but we don’t give them enough time and opportunity to really grow in the Word. Most of our teen activities are oriented around outreach, and not around spiritual growth.

So we expect our kids to be missionaries in hostile environments, even when we ourselves would not be, and we expect our kids’ involvement in church to be oriented around outreach, even when ours is not.

Perhaps the answer is found in the middle; we need to give our teens opportunity to grow, and not expect them to be mature missionaries at 14. But we also need to make ourselves get out of our pews and do more outreach ourselves, rather than relying on the kids’ and teens’ programs to grow our churches.

My rule of thumb when it comes to teens is that we should never ask them to do more for God than we are willing to do ourselves. If we do, then we’re not being good stewards either of the children that God has given us, or of the mission that God has given us to the wider world.

So, to sum up: no, we should not shelter our children unnecessarily. We need them to be involved in outreach. But we also need to recognize that they are still young Christians, and giving them opportunity for growth, and protection from attack, is not unreasonable as parents.

What do you think?

Related posts:

5 Steps to Raising a Child Who Will Stay Christian
How to Keep a Healthy Sex Life with Teens in the House
The Curse of Low Expectations for Teens