Realising my mistake I sent numerous messages via home visits, WhatsApp, Facebook, Facetime, text and aeroplane-in-the-sky writing. But the silence was deafening, so the team and I stood last night in the cold church doorway, imagining that it was all over.
But it wasn’t!
Suddenly these fantastic teens stumbled out of the foggy darkness into the slightly less cold church hall where we ate too many doughnuts and talked about porn. This got me thinking; there are so many other things for young people to do rather than rock up to one of the things us youth leaders put on. Our sofas might be harbouring a million strands of bacteria, the snooker table is pretty ropey and no one has seen the Xbox or dance mat for years (thank goodness), but still they come. OK, maybe in smaller numbers than we’d like, but they show up.
Why?
Maybe it’s because we take the time to really ‘see’ and then reflect back to them an image of themselves that they don’t glimpse in too many other places. Maybe it’s because of the emphasis we place on real connection and communication. Zara summed it up last night: “I feel closer to my friends when we’re messaging each other, but here in the group it’s even closer.”
Maybe it’s because we’re not afraid to get out the large sheets of paper every now and then and ask ‘where’s your head at?’ and not freak out by what they write down. I grew up in a church that loved having young people, but didn’t ‘get’ them. It certainly didn’t give space for us to air how complicated and fascinating we were finding faith, sexuality, relationships, identity, God and life. I don’t remember having a single conversation with a significant adult at church about anything that mattered to me outside of school work, GCSE options and where I saw myself in ten years’ time. And although these conversations are important, it took me years and years to come to the realisation that I wasn’t the only person struggling to find faith amid the swirling whirlpool of adolescence, and in a culture that was indifferent or even hostile to the God I was growing to love and serve.
Talking empowers young people to form their opinions and know their own minds
This past month I’ve been part of two unique gatherings of Christian youth leaders, eager to listen and respond well to young people. At one we immersed ourselves in the stories of Christian young people working out their faith identity in the light of their sexual identity. In the other, we heard a female youth leader share about being a teenager addicted to online porn. For each story the turning point was finding an adult at their moment of crisis who didn’t back off and refer on, but who leaned in, listened and enabled really good, godly, positive talking to take place over the following days, weeks, months and years: talking that empowers young people to form their opinions and know their own minds; talking that inspires young people to mine the scriptures for godly wisdom and helps them become fluent in talking with God; talking that opens up possibilities that come for young people when they have the confidence to speak up and speak out what’s on their heart.
Over the years I’ve spent lots of time up close and personal with youth leaders. I know how conversations in youth groups around the tough topics like sexuality, gender, bereavement and mental health often seem fraught with anxiety and confusion. As we try to navigate such emotive and important conversations with young people we can feel under immense pressure to ‘get it right’, and to have all the answers when we’re not even sure we know them ourselves. I think this has meant that sometimes, some of us have changed the subject or joined in the banter, rather than sought to lower the anxiety (theirs and ours!) and find ways to enable good conversations about the stuff that matters to our young people and to God.
If we don’t talk, there will be a lot of things that won’t be said.
But if we do talk…who knows?
If we do nothing else this week in our youth work, let’s talk. In youth cell, let’s name topics we’d be up for having a chat about. Read out the list of things we have a hunch God is passionate about young people finding hope in and freedom from. Fill a bin bag with GCSE syllabus study guides, magazines, iPhones, student bus passes, gig fliers, newspapers, empty beer cans, condoms, maps, guitars, cold pizza etc and dare a young person to rifle through it all and find one thing that God cannot deal with or has absolutely nothing to say about.
Let’s be those brave, slightly bonkers but deeply trusted adults who don’t claim to have all the answers, but aren’t afraid to demonstrate that discipleship doesn’t duck the tough or complicated stuff. If in doubt, talk.
