This shift to more pain, more confusion, more stress, and more isolation make the Jesus way of living truly revolutionary: something teenagers are hungry for.
Today’s teens are hungry for something to be passionate about and the message of Christ is wonderfully counter-cultural. While their school work calls for busyness, Jesus calls them to a relationship of trust and slowness. While their sports teams call them to performance, Jesus calls them to a place where their worth is pre-established. While their parents and even their peer clusters (and, unfortunately, churches) call them to wear a variety of masks to hide the pain in their lives, Jesus calls them to be themselves; the selves he so perfectly loves.
A primary issue for today’s frenzied teenagers is isolation. Teenagers today live in a world that is either completely or almost completely isolated from adults. This experience of isolation goes deeper: teenagers often experience isolation from self, others, and the world around them. But the gospel of Jesus Christ can penetrate this isolation and still bring about the kind of radical transformation we hope for in all our lives.
In the blur of everyday life, it’s tough for teenagers to experience these passion-worthy truths. But camps and retreats can provide mini monastic experiences; opportunities to pull away from the distractions of normal life and practise a slower-paced and spiritually focused daily rhythm.
In my rush to move away from manipulation of teenagers, I once shied away from calling students to a decision. (It’s not hard to get kids to ‘respond’, if you use the kind of manipulative techniques often perpetrated in our history of youth ministry — especially when it comes to ‘decision night’ at camp.) I was so conscious of not manipulating decisions that I threw the baby out with the bathwater.
IT’S VERY RARE TO FIND PEOPLE WHO MADE A ONE-ANDONLY- ONE DECISION FOR CHRIST. MOST OF US MAKE A SERIES OF DECISIONS
In recent years, I’ve come to realise a couple of things about these decisions. Firstly, it’s very rare to find people who made a one-andonly- one decision for Christ. Most of us make a series of decisions. In fact, most of us need to make a ‘decision for Christ’ pretty much every day! Secondly, teenagers (and adults) still need to make stake-in-the-ground choices: ‘I’m not going to be a part of this behaviour anymore’, ‘I’m going to rearrange my priorities based on this new information’, ‘I’m going to follow Jesus this year’. These choices – an ongoing series of spiritual choices in our lives — become guiding bumpers in our journey towards Christ.
So, finally, I’ve come to see spiritual decisions (especially the ‘biggies’ made at camps and retreats) as ‘Ebenezers’. Remember that great Old Testament word? Samuel put a big rock up, called it an Ebenezer, and said it was to commemorate a spot where God met us (1 Samuel 7:12). An Ebenezer is a spiritual marker. Significant spiritual decisions — when not manipulated — become spiritual markers for students. And when a 15-year-old girl finds, six months later, that she doesn’t ‘feel’ God anymore, she can hopefully reflect back on her Ebenezer from summer camp and say to herself, ‘But I know I felt God then; I know God is real, because I know God was real then.’
This may seem a bit simplistic, and even Ebenezers can be forgotten with enough landscape in between, but a series of spiritual markers seems to most accurately reflect the reality of the spiritual life for those of us with a few more years of perspective. But we have hope! We know that this God stuff is the real deal and following Jesus is the only way to really experience the fullness of life.
I want to be a youth worker who never manipulates or coerces teenagers into spiritual decisions. And I refuse to use certain types of programmes to manufacture behaviour and commitment. Instead, I am an environmental host, creating spaces where teenagers have an increased opportunity to experience Jesus. That’s why I still love, love, love the unique, out-of-the-ordinary environment of camps and retreats. Let’s help teenagers build some Ebenezers!
