The Myth of Adolescence

Diana West in her book The Death of the Grown Up rightfully argues that adolescence didn’t always exist. In fact, she says, it is a quite recent phenomenon. The word “teenager” wasn’t really used until 1941. Today, of course, adolescence is considered a fixed stage of development. We expect students will ‘lose’ their minds from ages 13 to 18. In virtually every other culture in the history of the world prior to late 20th century, children became adults. Not so anymore. They now become teenagers, or, to put it in more sociologically acceptable terms, they become adolescents. In other cultures, “teenagers” were marrying, farming, fighting wars, writing books, and in one case, bearing the Messiah.

Biblical Examples of teenagers who exceeded expectations

David faced Goliath when he was 17 years old. Before that he had killed many lions and bears. 1 Samuel 17:26 36 Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.”

Josiah became King at the age of eight years and started seriously seeking the Lord when he was 16 years and at 20 years. 2 Chronicles 34:3 For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images. (See also 2 Kings 22)

Daniel Shadrach Meshach and Abednego are actually referred to us “children” in Daniel 1:4, yet these young people turned around a whole nation from the worship of idols to the worship of God.

Mary was about 13 years old when she received the message to deliver Jesus – Joseph was a teenager too.

Jesus himself could engage the elders in the temple at the age of twelve. Luke 2:47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

Contemporary Examples

Catherine Booth the wife of William Booth, the founders of Salvation Army had read the entire Bible eight times by the time she was twelve years old.
John Quincy Adams the 6th president of the USA spent 3 years as a secretary to a mission to St Petersburg Russia to obtain recognition of the new USA. He was only 14 years old.

Brett Harris and his twin brother Alex Harris lead the largest teen website in the world known as the Rebelution which they founded when they were in their teens. They then wrote a classic book at the age of sixteen called ‘Do Hard Things. Rebelling Against Low Expectations’. What are some of the reasons that we not producing such in our generation?

For us to see such young men and women who are willing to conquer the times and challenges of their generation, we must deliberately disciple them. Our engagement must be deliberate, intentional and most importantly Biblical. A gospel centered view of the young people must lead our philosophy of ministry to them.

Unlearning and learning

What are some of the unbiblical philosophies that we have adopted that hinder a Gospel Centered approach to youth Ministry? What is the Biblical response to these philosophies?

The youth have a short attention span
One of the lies that we, youth ministers, have believed about the young people is that they have a short attention span. Let us remember briefly how our education system is structured. Most Public High schools begin their day at 4:30am or even earlier with an average of 5:00am. They then spend the whole day in rigorous academic engagements with short breaks in between. The day ends averagely at 10:00pm. Those are 18 hours of hard, rigorous work for children aged between 14-18!

The result of that lie is the creation of the youth/teen church that separates the young people from the adults because we are convinced that ‘they cannot understand hard spiritual truth’. The youth church ends up being more of entertainment rather than building up young people in the faith. Result? A bunch of non-believers filling up the pews of our churches.
Why? This is because we rarely preach the Gospel and so many of them have never heard it and for that reason are not Christians. The long-term effect of this philosophy is that since they are not believers, they are unable to overcome sin and eventually give up on the faith because they feel it doesn’t work for them. How harshly we will be judged for the loss of such precious souls!

Biblical response – We must have a Biblical Worldview about the young people as we do ministry. We must cease to see them as just a bunch of teenagers, but people lost in sin and in need of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to save them from sin. We are not called to entertain young people, but to preach to them the truth about sin, how it separates us from God and how we can be made right with Him. The battle really is not against the young and the old, but it is a battle for souls. Satan is working fulltime to hold them captive and take them to hell with him and Jesus has given us a way out. We cannot entertain young people at the expense of their souls. We need to preach as we preach ordinarily about the Gospel and not dilute the truth because we think the young people cannot understand. When we say, “Let them dance here in church instead of dancing at Carnivore”, we are admitting that we do not have a spiritual goal/agenda for them; we only want to keep them busy. We need to discover that “boredom for spiritual things” is a symptom of a spiritual problem. That indifference is not innocent as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:1 4 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

The young people do not understand hard doctrine
The other philosophy of ministry to young people that we have adopted as Youth ministers is the based on the lie that young people do not understand hard doctrine. This is not true. As we have seen earlier, young people are not only just young people but souls whom the devil are working hard to take to hell. The after effect of this lie is the lack of understanding of basic Biblical doctrines of faith that are essential for the soul to grow. We have young people and often sadly youth ministers who lack a basic understanding of the faith and cannot defend it or even explain it to a non-believer when required. We as a result have several people who may never have shared their faith to anyone, not because they do not want to, but because they do not even know what they believe.

The other effect is that we do not encourage our young people to read their Bibles, fast and pray, go for fellowship and Bible studies because we believe we need to create fun events around Christian stuff to encourage young people to come. The truth is that since the entertainment only lasts for a while and is more often than not used as bait; they will soon get bored and leave. They cycle goes on and on and we never quiet have any solid and true ministry.

Biblical response – We must engage our young people and encourage them to pursue God and holiness rather than fun and entertainment. We must have comprehensive discipleship programs that encourage and cause growth of faith. Our programs must be tailored and focused on Christian growth most importantly above everything else. We must put emphasis on Prayer and fasting. We must not only encourage them to fast but also have prolonged moments of Prayer and fasting with them. We must encourage wholesome reading of the Bible both at a personal and group level. Reading of wholesome Christian literature must also be part of our commitment as leaders and also to the young people. Let us give ourselves like the early to ‘teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.’ Acts 2:42. That is what Church is for both to the young and the old.

The Message remains the same but the methods must change
The other common philosophy that we are applying today as we minister to young people is the belief that we must change our methods of communicating the Gospel to the young people. One of the key effects of this belief is that we have replaced preaching with singing. Most of our communication of the Gospel is now being done through song or drama or some form of art that has partially or even completely replaced preaching. The tragedy here is that most of the songs that may have replaced this preaching are erroneous in doctrine and are often unbiblical.

Biblical response – God’s things must be done God’s way. God has not only stipulated in His word what He wants done, but He has also stipulated how He wants it done. Preaching for example is meant for explaining the faith and communicating the Gospel. 14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? Romans 10:14. We do not see the Apostles for example using song or drama to communicate the Gospel. We see Paul, Peter and the other Apostles in the book of Acts constantly explaining the Gospel using sometimes long speeches to both big and small crowds.

The other example would be the case of Uzza and the Ark of the Covenant. God had already given instructions on how the Ark was to be transported. In this case, we see Uzza trying to support it when the Oxen tripped. God is angry and strikes him dead. (See 1 Chronicles 13). Here we can only read how serious God was when He gave instructions on how to carry out the tasks that concerned Him. Uzza had good intentions, but that was not good enough. We must be committed to do God’s things, God’s way. Good intentions are not good enough; we must honor God how He wants to be honored.

Conclusion

We have such a huge responsibility to lead the young people that God has given us to know Christ and to know Him well. The battle is not a battle against the young and the old. It is a battle for souls. We must travail daily in prayer for that Christ Jesus will be formed in them. We must pray that they will ‘grow more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that they may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.’ Philippians 1:9-10. Our responsibility is not to entertain them but to train them in godliness and teach them to obey Christ and thereby produce laborers for the Kingdom. May we be found faithful to scripture as we serve them. May God’s grace abound daily as we labor in His vineyard.