Ethics, Critical Thinking, and Youth Ministry

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I remember first reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis when I was in my late teens. His opening ‘but that’s my orange segment!’ gambit inspired me to think more clearly about morality and ethics in relationship to my faith.

Fast forward a couple of years and I’m sat in my first ethics lecture a bible college hearing Dr. David Field’s three golden rules for ethical thinking. They were:

  1. Life is complicated
  2. The Bible is sufficient
  3. The alternatives are bankrupt

The next three months in these lectures were the most awe-inspiring time in my academic career. Ever since then I’ve been trying to explore one big question in my youth projects: Does Jesus work in real life?

 

Getting the juices going

Today, I find that there is nothing more invigorating for conversation in a youth club than a good ethical dilemma. Facilitated conversations about morality and God’s plan for humanities’ maturity is guaranteed to get even the most apathetic young person engaging with passion they didn’t even know they had.

What new rules would you give to the Internet? Who should be in charge of what you do with your body? Is there any situation where mind control should be allowed?

These kind questions fuel new layers of thinking and – properly handled – can draw a young person deeper into relationship with God and draw a community deeper into relationship with each other.

 

The balance between abstract openness and objective authority

Properly handling these types of issues requires a balance between firm leadership and an openness to grace.

Sometimes people in these conversations will give voice to thought that might well stray over the line of heresy. Great – this is something we can work with! In my opinion confusion and shaky foundations are much better out than in where the light of day, the clarity of the Bible, and the love of genuinely tolerant brothers and sisters can sharpen, inform and grow the thinker.

This sharpening, however, needs be done with maturity and great care. Rather than simply carpet bombing your project themes with hot topics like abortion and sexuality, instead create a regular time where many questions are thought about from multiple perspectives.

This isn’t to say you should leave every topic as messy heap of existential and epistemological indecision (it is responsible to draw things together, challenge, rebuke, correct, and speak clearly from the Bible), but you should make a safe space for the process to happen as a process. This means critical thinking, deep discussion, open questions, and sometimes raw confusion.

 

A hardcore example

There is a thin line between ethical discussion and critical thinking. Thinking about anything ethically means asking questions of it. Mathematician Jacob Bronowski famously said, “That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.” (This may have been more famous for its quote in the original X Files!).

There are lots of easy places to go for an example, but let’s take a more interesting one. Consider this, then, for a line of questioning:

  • Is there a distinction between the person and character of God (who he is), and the revelation and actions of God (what he says and does)?
  • What level of distinction is there?
  • Is it possible to worship what God does or what God says, and not actually be worshipping God?
  • If that is true, is it possible to make idol of what God does and says, and in effect be committing heresy by worshipping it.
  • Is it dangerous or sinful to worship the Bible? Is it at all? Is there a worse alternative?
  • How would you know if you were worshipping Bible instead of God? Could it be possible to worship the Bible as healthy worship of God?
  • Is it possible the two people to go through these same questions and arrive at equally valid answers; distinct yet equally correct because of their level of faith and maturity?
  • Should all people think the same about these issues regardless of where they are at in their faith?

This is an epistemological and yet still ethical line of systematic-theological scrutiny. We’re talking about the character of God, yet we’re also talking about revelation, and we’re talking about both corporate and individual worship. Added to this, we’re asking some interesting questions of our Christian habits and what is actually happening under the surface, and what is driven by our hidden assumptions. Cool eh?

None of the above questions have a simple ‘yes / no’ answer – they are all answered in degrees along a spectrum. Further, each question needs to be re-evaluated in light of the next.

This brings us into a fantastic line of ethical discussion. It relies on community conversation, it needs us to be nuanced and measured, it needs us to engage with both hearts and minds, it needs us to turn to prayer, and it needs us to read our Bibles carefully with a greater dependence on the Holy Spirit. Doesn’t that just sound like maturity?

 

Ok, so what about in a youth club? … Plain English please, Tim.

Of course, I wouldn’t suggest simply copying and pasting that above example set of questions into your youth group, but it should give you an idea of what you’re looking for.

Questions shouldn’t always be closed down, simple, black-and-white, or enslaved to rules of thumb. Life isn’t this simple after-all!

For easier start, simply answer questions with questions for a little while. Don’t dissolve into diverting every question another question but do take a couple of extra minutes to open discussion up bit more, before you close it down and move on.

Remember your golden follow-up and open-up questions:

  • Who?
  • What?
  • When?
  • Where?
  • Why?
  • How?

Let’s let the Bible, and our Christianity speak with the same complexity that real life affords. Let’s dig, get deep, and get applicable. Let’s not muddy the waters where they are clear and let’s not transform our projects into intellectual exercises, but let’s take more care to give exploration the room it deserves.

 

Some caveats

  • It’s important for you to be comfortable and confident in your knowledge of God and His Word.
  • It’s important to make people feel safe by keeping conversations from dissolving into personally targeted debates.
  • It’s important to ask responsible.. not just ‘cool’ ones.
  • It’s important to be aware of triggers in the room (additional needs, mental health etc.).
  • It’s important to make sure your questioning is serving your young people, and not just your intellectual curiosities or (heaven forbid) your god-complex.
  • Remember that God is big enough to handle paradox, disagreement, differences, and even subjectivity. His glory is not dependent on your ability to rationalise it out.
  • That said, objective discussion should always stand firm on the Bible and be led by a keen awareness of the Holy Spirit. Pray for discernment – trust in grace!

 

Some sample questions to get you started

  • Can a person really be anything they want? What are some things they can’t be (logically), and what are some things they should not be (morally)? Who says? Why?
  • Whose happiness is the most important in the world to pursue? What should be allowed to get in the way of someone being happy? Is happiness always the most important thing to be? What else is there? When happiness isn’t available, are you less than human?
  • Can you love someone even if they don’t feel loved by you? Is it important that the person you love actually feels loved?
  • What do you do if someone’s ‘rights’ trample over someone else’s ‘rights’? What ‘rights’ do people really have or should they have?

 

… I might add some more later 😛

Have fun!

 

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

Working with Bereaved Young People

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The reality

Child Bereavement UK report that 70% of schools have a bereaved pupil on their role at any one time, that 92% of all young people will experience a significant bereavement before they’re 16, and that a parent of a dependent young person dies every 22 minutes.

This is not something that ‘might’ come up at your youth project. Are you ready for it when it does?

When it gets real

I remember getting a phone call at 6am from a local school in London to explain that a very popular sixteen-year-old boy had tragically lost his life in the night. He had been out with some friends, came home late, and – complicated by an undiagnosed heart problem – choked on his own vomit in his sleep. I was asked to attend a memorial assembly that very morning, then asked if I would stay behind afterwards to ‘counsel’ some of his friends.

I got up, donned my suit, and headed through the morning London traffic. The assembly was heart-breaking. Two thousand students, many openly weeping, a confused and unsure shell of a head teacher trying desperately to find words of comfort, and the boy’s parents, fresh from the hospital on the front row in each other’s arms. It got very real very fast.

You first bucko

When young people are hurting in your youth group, or – tragically – when one of your young people dies, you get hurt. You too are bereaved. You too are going to feel it and need to work through stages of grief and come to terms with loss. You will feel it too.

Counsellors and missionaries have professional ‘debriefing’ sessions, where they can methodically move burdens away from themselves. After a week of counselling, the counsellor will share the stories from therapy sessions with their supervisor to relieve the weight.

We too need to make sure we are not isolated. Pastors, line-managers, mentors, and friends need to be in place to help us process hurt too. If we don’t do this, we won’t be much help to the young people!

What does loss feel like to a young person?

This is really tricky because everyone is of course very different. Consider that a 2-5 year old would struggle more with the abstract idea of permeance or finality; a 5-8 year old might start processing universality, potentially leading to separation anxiety; a 8-12 year old may begin to grapple with their own mortality and fears linked to that; whereas an adolescent is more likely to ask abstract questions (futility of life, etc.), in relationships to their own experiences. Death is a huge abstract concept to process and different ages and people are working at different parts of the journey.

For many young people we work with, death might be a completely alien concept – so even those on the outsides of the blast zone of personal loss might still be feeling grief strongly.

Young people are reported to feel all kinds of emotions including numbness, sadness, fear, tiredness, anxiety, calmness, worry, weirdness, guilt, injustice, confusion and even peace. It’s important for us to remind them that they’re not broken or weird if they are feeling something other than ‘sad’.

With that in mind, young people experience loss and grief much like the rest of us, the difference however, is a developing young person is missing the context of greater life experience in order to frame those emotions.

Our job then is not to manage or steer emotions, but to provide a healthy structure so they can experience them freely and healthily in a safe and secure way.

Does it ‘get better’

This depends on a lot of things – especially closeness to the person lost, however, as a general rule of thumb, loss doesn’t just ‘go away’ but we do ‘get better’ to some degree. Reality changes, and with proper help we are able to move through and beyond, rather than just move on.

It’s interesting how many people start to feel guilty when the hurt changes shape or diminishes somewhat. It’s important for us to encourage them that it’s not disrespectful, dishonourable, or forgetting – it’s just growth and that’s healthy.

A lost person will always be part of our lives, and their absence will always feel ‘wrong’, however that feeling of loss and wrongness does move from the constant central focus so we are able to live on healthily.

Some practical thoughts

What NOT to say to a bereaved young person

Hopefully these are obvious, but let’s say them anyway:

He’s gone to a better place… (it might be true, but the question it raises is ‘so why is that not here with me!?!’)

Everything happens for a reason… (what could possibly be the reason for…?!)

Time heals all wounds… (Actually no it doesn’t. Healing requires time, but that’s totally different)

Try not to cry… (Why the heck not? It’s an entirely sensible, apt, and healthy thing to do!)

Be strong… (So it’s weak to grieve now is it?)

Let me tell you a story about my loss… (How about you just acknowledge my hurt for a while!)

A few more things to avoid

Focusing on yourself rather than them

Denying the seriousness of the event

Devaluating their feelings

Telling them not to think or talk about it

Making assumptions or oversimplifications

Over-reacting (from your own anxiety or fear)

Withdrawing

A few things you SHOULD say

I’m sorry for your loss

I love you

I don’t have the right words, but know that I care

I don’t know how you feel, but I’m available to help

How can I support you?

My favourite memory of your loved one it…

Saying nothing

Many people have reported that the most helpful thing during their time of loss and grief was just a present friend. Someone who just came to be with them, hung out with them, or just sat with them in silence.

The power of presence when it comes with warmth and compassion is both palatable and powerful. Don’t underestimate the power of just being with someone who is hurting.

Grief is exhausting!

It really is! Your mind, heart and body all dial up to 11 and work hard to process this new reality. Off the back of that, patterns and habits start to fall away.

With this in mind we should gently encourage young people to keep eating, drinking, sleeping, socialising (somewhat), and exercising. Even just going for ten-minute walks is important.

Going back to school

It’s important to go back to school sooner rather than later, but it does need to be managed carefully. We can work with the family to help a bereaved young person manage their return well though. This might included:

Half days

No exams / homework

Permission slips to step out of lessons for a break

Who tells the students?

What about the funeral?

It’s important to give young people the choice about whether or not they want to go. Trying to keep them from it because it might be too painful could cause resentment later but forcing them to go might mean confronting things that they didn’t feel ready for.

This choice should be made off the back of clear information. Explain exactly, bluntly, and clearly what is going to happen and why. Encourage questions without pushing and ask them if there is any way they would like to add to the service. This could be reading a prayer, laying some flowers, or picking a song.

If the loss affects you too then you should also make the choice for yourself whether to go, however It might be appropriate for you to ask the family what their expectations for you are. When I have been, I have sat at the back, payed my respects, then let people come to me if they want to, rather than swooping in as the superstar youth pastor.

In the youth club

Prepare the groundwork beforehand by talking about death in teaching topics, creating an open community, and encouraging conversation and questions.

Don’t’ taboo tradition to the point where you downplay any kind of ritual. Ritual can be immensely helpful to help young people grieve and find some sense of closure.

I once went to the school to help during the death of a pupil. I, and a couple of local counsellors and pastors, went to a temporary classroom to be available to chat. The students were also told that it was ok to write some messages or stories on the walls inside if that would help them.

Over the next couple of hours, we saw hundreds of students come through that building, almost all of whom left a message. By the afternoon every piece of wall, inside and outside, the carpet, the tables, the chairs, and the ceiling were covered (and I mean covered) by writing:

There were funny stories of times when friends had gone out and done stupid things together.

There were shared dreams and aspirations of what they wanted to be when they grew up.

There were heart-wrenching, deepest apologies – the guilt of which you cannot imagine.

Myself and the other counsellors walked around like lost sheep. We tried, very carefully, to talk to some of the young people; but that’s really not what they wanted. I shared a hug with a young lad I knew from my youth club at the time, tears lining his face. I had no idea what to say and no idea what to do.

You learn about these times in college and through books, but nothing prepared me for it. I remember tangibly thinking, God please help me take my youth ministry more seriously.

Of course, this is not youth work going wrong, this is youth work working! This is youth ministry at its most pertinent. The creativity of the school gave the young people an uncommonly valuable way of moving thorough their pain as a community. It was amazing. I was there, at best, to facilitate the safety of the activities and the tone of the room. God was obviously, however, in their midst.

This is the power of ritual. Light a candle, create a memorial book – do something tangible.

Resources

I want to plug a friend’s workbook. It’s a practical booklet that you can work through one-to-one with bereaved young people. Grab a copy here.

There are phonelines like Cruise Bereavement, Childline, and Samaritans; and websites like Hope Again, Winston’s Wish, RD4U and Youth Access. These are all helpful. However, I strongly encourage you to familiarise yourself with local groups and networks.

Finally, don’t forget the GP, who can often connect a hurting young person up with groups and therapy that we just don’t have access to.

Finally finally, pray. God is the one who understand bereavement in a way we never could, and he comes with hope and love the likes of which we could never show. Leave it with Him!

 

Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash

6 Ways to Train Teenagers to Read Their Bibles

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Youth work models need to firmly stand on the Bible. God’s word needs to be sewn into the very fabric of discipleship that we are developing. This means helping young people engage with the Bible for themselves. We need to train teenagers to read their Bibles fully.

Getting young people to independently open the Bible and read it is a great victory, but only half the battle.

The second half is to help them independently examine and understand the Bible for themselves – and this is frankly where most of us wimp out!

A Generation Bought Up on Spoon Feeding Notes

I was struck recently when reviewing some popular Youth Bible study notes by just how proof-text-with-explanation based they were. Spoon fed, on a plate with little or no reference to how, who, what, when, where and why. No need to think or examine the verses whatsoever. Really no need to read them. What they did most clearly was help young people examine themselves as a person and apply new things to their lives. This begs the question though; if that application is not being built from the Bible passage, where is it coming from?

“Getting young people to independently open the Bible and read it is half the battle, but this is far from the whole battle!”

This, of course, is the method of Bible study most of Gen Y and the Millennials have been bought up on; the soundbite and the blog. An interesting read that demands little if any independent thought.

My wife works in a Christian bookshop, and by perusing the Youth Bible studies section you can see that in the last decade this is a pretty standard pattern. For many of us this is Bible study, we’ve never known anything different. Our Bible study notes include a passage to read, a proof-text (‘key verse’) taken out of context and a basic thought from it explained and opened up – with a couple of challenges thrown in for good measure.

This isn’t Bible study though. Bible study is having a conversation with God through the text. Reading it properly, asking it questions, looking for patterns, relationships, correlations and hidden gems is Bible study. Exegesis (to use the proper term) is getting into the nitty gritty, learning how to read the Bible independently and hear it’s challenges without the need for supporting notes.

Why Is This So Important For The Next Generation?

Not training young people to exegete-read the Bible (that is seek to swim in it’s depths and find treasure) is like buying them a guitar in order to introduce them to Brit-Pop; it’s only going to go so far!

Young people need to know how to read their Bibles so that they:

  • Can develop a personal relationship with God that’s independent of their youth group, church community or Bible notes
  • Have more to offer in their youth group and church community life
  • Will grow in their personal holiness and faith and will challenge others to do so too
  • Can keep a growing check their own sin and personal habits
  • Will learn to recognize and discern God’s voice more clearly and notice when it’s missing,
  • Won’t fall victim to spoon feeding and won’t be dependent on fallible teachers and notes
  • Will know how to pick a healthy Church when they are at uni etc.,
  • Can survive when not able to find good Bible teaching.
  • Will simply live life to its fullest the John 10:10 way!

We need to teach young people how to read the Bible – not just to read it.

How do we do this?

For a basic way in I offer a mix of five random things to help us teach Bible study to our teenagers:

  1. Learn to do it ourselves!!!
  2. Model it in Bible studies
  3. Get them to do it in breakout pairs/groups when in Bible studies together
  4. Help them one-to-one
  5. Get them to read a book like ‘Dig Deeper’ by Nigel Beynon & Andrew Sach
  6. Teach them to get messy!
  7. Learn to do it ourselves!!!

This is the key bit, and without it the other four bits won’t work. As I said before, many of us don’t realise that what we’ve been doing for the last who knows how many years isn’t really Bible study. It came as a huge shock to me when at 18 I went to Bible college and realised I knew spotty things about God without any reference to why, and when I discovered passages I had been using to prove certain ‘truths’ just didn’t teach them. I’m definitely not saying that we all need to go to Bible college, but we do need to make some serious effort – you won’t regret it!

– Find decent Bible teachers and stick to them
– Listen to amazing Bible unpacking talks (desiringgod.org)
– Find mentors or mini classes
– Read good Bible teaching/explaining books
– Read your Bible slowly with highlighters, pens, paper, margin mess… whatever you need

  1. Model it in Bible studies

Leading decent Bible studies as a group has got to be the linchpin. It’s the key place that they will pick up and learn how to do it and it will give them the overviews and anchors they need, along with an accountability space to check up on how they’re doing.

“We need to teach young people how to read the Bible – not just to read it.”

– Teach and display where and how you made points from the Bible when you make them
– Ask questions that make them look at the text itself, even (sometime especially) if the answers are obvious
– Ask them to summarize main points, identify characters, examine the context etc.
– Print out copies of the passage for them to go through highlighting things like verbs, nouns, speeches, connectives, etc. that might be useful in the study
– Get them to ask their own questions of the text itself and answer those together first (my first question after reading every passage is ‘what did you notice?’)

  1. Get them to do it in breakout pairs/groups

The next zeroing in step to independent Bible study after the small group, is getting them to help each other – without relying on you the teacher. This givens them a chance to adapt what they’ve learned, try their strengths, push their confidences, work on their community interaction and help each other out!

– Give each breakout pair/group a section of the passage to study together then summarize their findings to the whole group
– Make sure they’ve got space to write, scribble, & highlight (printed off passages are great)
– Give them specific questions to answer in their group from the passage like ‘what is the main point,’ ‘what shocked you the most,’ ‘what did you learn that you didn’t know before’
– Allow them the option of feeding back in creative ways (pictures, drama, song) as long as it communicates the actual passage itself
– Give them enough room and time to complete the task well, but not so much time that they can wander. Knowing that they will need to feed back is usually encouragement enough to stay on task

  1. Help them one-to-one

The final step to independent Bible study after group and small group work is getting alongside them to mentor, teach and role model what’s in the word. This is important for a whole world of stuff – and teaching Bible reading (overtly or not) is invaluable for all of it.

– Get alongside them for 20-40mins JUST to read the Bible with them. Pick a book and go through it verse by verse, word by word
– Start each new meeting with them summarizing the passage from the last meeting
– Get them to delve into why specific words we’re chosen etc.
– Look at tools like ‘context’, ‘purpose’ and ‘order’ in the passages you choose. (N.b. I usually find 1-2 verses a week works well for most growing Christians)

If you would like a free downloadable crib sheet that I’ve used before click here.

  1. Get them to read a book like ‘Dig Deeper’ by Nigel Beynon & Andrew Sach

Rather than buying them Bible reading notes, buy them an easy usable how to manual that will help them read the Bible itself without notes. Dig Deeper is an epic example that I highly recommend. It’s great for independent work, or one-to-one, but can also be a good group study tool and it’s useful training for Bible study leaders.

– Buy the book for them as a gift, and make sure you’ve read it yourself!
– They should read a chapter a week & do the examples
– Ask them questions on it & ask to see their examples
– Give them new verses to work on that need the tools explained in the book to understand

  1. Teach them to get messy!

Teach them to get messy! I don’t care if they need to underline every single word in a different colour, allow them to draw in their Bibles – or if that’s a cultural no-no where you are, print out passages for them!

– They should do whatever helps them s l o w  d o w n , ask questions of the text, and highlight key sections. I’d rather a young person come with a tatty, Biro-blessed, dogeared Bible than a pristine one that’s obviously never been touched.
– Teach them to get personal with the Bible and get messy with it. Bring out the highlighters in droves (you can always buy a new one for them!)

 

Your First Question at Youth Bible Studies

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So you’ve had some food, played a game, prayed and read your passage – now it’s time for the study. What do you do? What’s the first question? How do you start off in a way that sets a direction that will bring these young people on in their walk with God and their relationship with the Bible?

This first question should 1. draw them back into the passage not away from it, 2. leave room for misunderstanding and vulnerabilities, 3. give space for different opinions, 4. not be an excuse for the opening portion of a sermon and 5. simply get them talking as a group.

“This simple question is your chance to establish Bible, group, individuality and agenda – on their terms – in one swoop!”

My first question is always, without exception the same: “What did you notice?”

I might milk it a bit: “So what did you notice, anything at all, what did you like, not like, what sounds cool, what doesn’t make any sense … what jumped out at you, for any reason whatsoever?”

Starting with this question has often meant totally abandoning the rest as we have been jumping around the whole passage through what they noticed well into the evening.

There are some important followups that keep things moving and opening like: ‘why did that jump out?’ or ‘so what do you think that means?’ or ‘how would that look today?’ or ‘can you see anything else in there that points to that? And of course each time something is noticed, you can make it communal, ‘so everybody, what do you think that means?’ or ‘turn to someone else and explain that in your own words’ or ‘does anyone know the answer to that?

This simple question is your chance to establish Bible, group, individuality and agenda – on their terms – in one swoop. Don’t underestimate it’s power and always give it room. Youth Bible Studies are always worth it!

How to relate to young people… ish

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I gave a training night a few days ago on ‘Relational Youth Ministry’ mainly ripping off Mark Yaconelli’s brilliant book, ‘Contemplative Youth Ministry.’

Mark outlines the premise to his book in the phrase “young people are not blank slates, and Christianity is not words” and hints at the tendency we have to try and fill one with the other. He boils down the issue that leaves us with said tendency in the following three statements:

“We don’t know how to be with our kids,
We don’t  know how to be with ourselves,
We don’t know how to be with God.”

What he makes clear is the symbiotic relationship between the three, and how systematically one effects the other, and effects the other, dominoing into a swirling votex of bad relationships.

We know how to entertain, test, market to, and judge kids; how to make our own lives about jobs, roles, stuff, and busyness; and we know how to talk about, sing to, debate, and defend God. However we don’t know how to hang out with, find space for, or just take time to be with any one of them.

If I planned my marriage day by day, hour by hour around romantic activity and left no room for spontaneity, silence, or simply being agenda-less with my wife then we simply wouldn’t have a marriage.

Now there’s a lot of material out there on ‘how to relate to young people’ and some of it’s pretty good too! However, learning how to relate to young people is like learning just how to put ketchup on a hotdog without learning how to make it first. All you’ve got is a messy hand!

There is a causal relationship between relating to God, relating to ourselves, and relating to young people; one overflows into the over which overflows into the other. You can’t start pouring half way and hope for the best, even if you do manage to ‘successfully’ relate to young people you can guarantee you’ll be shattered by the end of the week and be heading for a spiritual sink hole.

There’s lots we can say about this (and indeed did at the training evening!) but for now with only a couple of minutes of battery left I’ll leave you with the absolute, ultimate, golden rule on relating with young people. Are you listening? Shhh it’s a secret… … …

IT STARTS WITH YOU RELATING TO GOD!

If you want your relationships with young people to thrive, be purposeful, and have a lasting impact on their lives then put your energy into your relationship with God. Period. It starts with him! Draw near to God and He will draw near to you… and you’ll both draw near to young people.

If you want to be an effective youth worker, you must be a personal, powerful, and passionate disciple of Jesus Christ. It really is that simple. The more I experience youth work, learn about youth ministry theory, and read youth pastor books and blogs the more I know how little it all counts without a personal and whole-hearted commitment to draw near to God.

Relating to young people is smoke. You can’t learn to make smoke. Your relationship to God is fire. Fire makes smoke.

Battery… nearly… gone…

end note.

Are Parents The Best Mentors?

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Marginalise parents in youth ministry at your peril. They are the linchpin to effective, long term discipleship, and the primary Biblical institution for passing on the truth of the Gospel to young people. They are not, however, the only part of effective youth work. They are not peers or pastors for instance. They are not replacements to group discipleship programs, or evangelistic meetings.

So are they mentors?

What Is A Mentor?

At it’s core, a mentoring relationship is between an older, wiser, more experienced person who has cultivated a relationship of trust and positive-behaviour modelling to a younger, developing person.

More specifically, mentors need to have a degree of detachment, neutrality and independence from the person being mentored. This gives them not only increased objectivity, but also the security of not making themselves a hyper-dependent God replacement.

There is also peer support, where we are continually encouraged to build one another up, but I’m unsure you could really count this strictly as ‘mentoring.’

Can Parents Do This?

Logically you could argue that they can, and sometimes do. That said, my instinct and experience tells me that parents have too much at stake, or are too personally invested to have that required objectivity. Their children are their own flesh, and their hopes or expectations for their children can all too easily bleed through.

Parents are integral to the life of a young person. This means they are often a topic that needs to be discussed with a mentor in ways that couldn’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t be done directly with a parent. Not for secrecy, but again for objectivity. This is the same reason that therapists don’t treat their own family.

Parents also have a long term organic journey will their children that predates and will probably outlast the mentor. They grow with their children as parents and people, and the relationship turns in several directions as they both develop. This isn’t always stable and has it’s own sets of rules, norms and variable conditions that might not be helpful or secure in a mentoring relationship.

Finally, in today’s church climate, you cannot guarantee that the parent will have the Christian background or values needed to speak that Deuteronomy 6 truth into their children’s lives.

Who Are Our Biblical Models?

Moses was mentored by his Father-In-Law, Jethro, and Ruth by her Mother-In-Law, Naomi – but these are probably the closest parent-child mentoring relationships we see. These are very particular cases without the pre-existing childhood relationships in place.

There was also Moses and Joshua, Elisha and Elijah, Eli and Samuel, Barnabas and Paul, Paul and Timothy, Elisabeth and Mary, and Jesus with Peter, James and John.

Should Parents Do It?

There is certainly a lot of mentoring that parents can (and should) do. They are commanded to teach truth, walk with, listen to, not exasperate, and to condition their children to walk with God. They should be the first people to introduce a young person to Jesus and should always be an open, safe place to share openly with. Should.

It takes a community to raise a Child though, and a body of Christ to develop a healthy church member. The wisest parents I know understand this and they get that they cannot be all things. They realise that having a mentor for their child is not a snub or a replacement, but a healthy partnership that supplements and develops levels of accountability for parents.

How Should The Parent and Mentor Relationships Compliment Each Other?

Although not always possible, the mentor and parent should form some kind of relationship. This is important for safeguarding reasons if nothing else!

This partnership sows seeds of trust and develops the organic clarity that’s needed to distinguish the two relationships. It’s not the parent’s job to pry into the things being discussed (outside basic appropriateness and safety), and it’s not the mentor’s job (ever, ever, ever!) to replace the parent. *Note: This is still true for lone-parent, adopted, divorced, orphaned or unchurched. You are not the parent.

So mentors: Respect the parents. Don’t badmouth them or chip away at their foundation. Offer then support and be a supplement, not a replacement.

Parents: Invite the mentor over for dinner occasionally. Say thank you and show that you respect them and are grateful. Pray for them, and don’t assume they are doing your job for you.

Church: Implement mentoring programs within carefully constructed safeguarding policies. Preach often and share clearly on mentoring relationships in the Bible, and the importance of being one body, looking after each other.

Youth Workers: Don’t necessarily assume that you should be the mentor. Especially if you have a youth club of more than three teenagers! I will write soon on how to develop a mentoring program – but for now, check out the excellent XL mentoring program here – which you can fund through the Cinnamon Network.