​​What Is the Most Helpful Way for the Church to Minister to Teens?

Active Participants

One of the most helpful resources that I think we have within the local church for our younger members—especially those who are teenagers—is for them not to feel like they’re just passive consumers of church, but that they’re, in fact, active participants in church. They are not only being taught and cared for, but they’re also teaching and caring for others. They’re, in fact, full disciples, if they’re identifying as followers of Jesus, at their age rather than people who we hope one day will be disciples.

There’s a beauty to the parent-child relationship, but there’s also a beauty to the relationships that younger people in the church can have with adults who are not their parents, who can point them to Jesus from the different life circumstances that they’re in.

One of the ways in which we perhaps haven’t served our younger people well historically is by overly segregating the different demographics within the church. One of the most beautiful and encouraging things I’m experiencing in my own local church is seeing the integration between our youngest members and our older members. My fourteen-year-old, for example, is learning biblical Hebrew alongside an adult member who has expertise in that area, and so they’re able to connect over that.

I’m seeing a young recent convert in our community who has a strong relationship with my younger daughter. I’m seeing adult single friends within the church who will take my individual kids out for dinner and talk to them like they’re an adult, connecting with them and engaging with them in ways that make them feel like they’re not a junior member of the church, but in fact, they’re a member of this more expansive body. That is something that is very attractive not only for kids who are being raised in the church but also for kids who are not in the church currently.

There’s an opportunity to welcome younger people into our homes and for them to experience some of the richness of community.

We recently had an Easter service at our church and my daughter had invited a friend of hers from high school. This friend had never been to church at all before. And what she said at the very beginning of the service was, “Oh, this is so nice. If I were Jesus, I would come back here.”

It was sort of a strange thing to hear a fifteen-year-old say, but I think she was touching on the edges of, “Oh, this is a loving and very welcoming and quite a rich and diverse community. And even though I don’t actually understand the Christian message at all yet, I can see something of the goodness of it embodied in the community here.”

For those of us who are a little bit older, there’s an opportunity to welcome younger people into our homes and for them to experience some of the richness of community, fellowship, and sense of family that we can have in church, and a sense of a place for them to belong—even perhaps before they believe in the person who we are worshiping and who is at the center of every expression of Christian love.

Rebecca McLaughlin is the author of 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity.

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