A Parental Challenge

How are teens expected to grow in the understanding and application of their faith if parents aren’t highly involved? I don’t place blame at the feet of parent exclusively. As a youth worker, I have more than failed at teaching and empowering parents to effectively reach their own teens. Parents can’t be expected to automatically know what to do and in many cases, it’s just awkward and uncomfortable to sit down with a teen and say “So, tell me about your faith!”

I just completed a poll with 223 teens participating. Here’s a quick breakdown of who took the poll.  Just over 80% of those who took it attended church at least twice a month. I filtered out those 168 teens and am using those stats below.

33% were male and 66% were female

The questions I want to look at today are “How often do your parents have conversations with you about faith?” and “How often would you want your parents to talk with you about faith issues?”

As the above graphs show, about half of parents talk to their teens once a month or more and half talk to them less than once a month to never. Teens want parents to talk to them about their faith. The second graph shows that nearly 70% of students want their parents to talk to them about it at least once a month. 40% want to have conversations weekly. The most interesting thing I found was that less than 5% of teens want their parents to talk to them less than they already do. More than 95% want their parents to talk to them at least as much if not more than they already do. About 50% of teens want their parents to talk to them more than they do.

What teens don’t want is another lesson. Is it possible to converse about faith on a Christ follower to Christ follower level? Is it possible to incorporate it into everyday conversations without it turning awkward? I believe so. Here are five tips for you as you continue to journey of leading and coaching your teen in his/her relationship with Christ.

• Talk you the youth director and find out what topics they’re covering and throughout the week, make an effort to include that topic on your conversations.
• Take a look at the struggles your teen faces personally and if you also has issues with it, share with them how you dealt with it when it was an issue for you.
• Ask them to be a greater part of a small group/house church/ family devotion time with you.
• Ask them how you can pray for them.
• Have conversations with your spouse in front of them regarding faith and how it affects your life.

So, as a parent, how far are you willing to go to bridge the gap that exists between you and your teen?

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