A Letter To Parents

I am not a parent. I have no children, and so I can't even begin to say that I know what it is like to walk in your shoes. But I can say this: I know that you are the most important, most influential person in the spiritual life of your adolescent. It does not matter if they acknowledge it, it does not matter if you never talk with your child about about your spiritual life or their, it does not matter if you are not sure your children are even hearing you, no matter how they react, YOU are the most important person in the outcome, formation, and longevity of the spiritual lives of your teenager.

Over and over again the research points to parents being far and away the most consistent predictor of the faith of their children. As Kenda Creasy Dean puts it "we get what we are." Christian Smith and the National Study for Youth and Religion name parents, and in particular, the mother, as the most influential factor in the participation and internalization of the faith of their children. " On page 116 of Soul Searching he says, "Family socialization generally seems to work when it comes to teenagers’ religious faith and practice. Furthermore, the quality of the relationships that parents build with their teenagers, and their own choices about marriage relationships, education, and occupations—insofar as they have choices in these areas—also create family contexts that again form the outcome of their teenagers’ religious and spiritual lives."

Your kids ARE listening, or more accurately, they are absorbing. They are absorbing your beliefs, habits, and level of internalization. I want to take a minute and talk about the internalization piece (which is a word coined by Fuller Youth Institute). In a nut shell: internalization is the level at which one's faith affects one's daily life and character. It is about Christ changing who we are, not just what we do. An integrated faith changes thoughts, values, beliefs, priorities, budgets, relationships, and schedules. A person who is internalizing their faith in Christ is moving towards loving others and God on a daily basis. This is often messy and awkward. It involves mistakes, apologies, harming others, being harmed, sharing our tender spots, it often involves anger, confusion, hope, tears, affection, kindness, and grace - lots and lots of grace. If you are moving towards internalizing your faith, then the odds are high that your child is as well. In short, adolescents are absorbing and mimicking the level at which the faith of their parents is or is not internalized.

I ask myself this often as a youth worker: Am I being transparent about my mess? I am becoming more and more passionate about parents also asking that question. The influence of positive parental relationships during adolescence is both one of the most powerful influences on lasting faith, and one of the places that our culture has stereotypically expected disengagement on both the part of the adolescent and the parent. While teens naturally reproduce the spirituality of their parents, they also benefit greatly from an adult, and most particularly, a parent having an open dialogue about one another'sspiritual lives. In particular, if you are following Christ, then sharing about your daily spiritual life, how you became a Christian, and everything in between can equip your child to navigate the transition into adulthood with their faith in tact. It makes so much sense to me! You have lived more, and you know what it looks like to follow Christ in your stage of life, and quite simply, your kids do not. They have not lived it or walked it and cannot know what it looks like without the adults in their lives being honest about what it means to follow Christ in all of its messy glory.

How you live your spiritual life matters, how you share that with your teenager matters. I am praying for you all as you make this journey. Please pray for me as I learn to relate to you and your children. Let's keep walking this road together.

Feeding My Inner Nerd

Today I caught myself walking across campus with a huge grin on my face, nose burried in a book. I have become one of those people who were so befuddling to me in undergrad - openly grinning from ear to ear while reading what might appear to be a dry, purely academic work. This particular book is academic, but that does not make it dry. Academics that are well-done do affect daily life. Yes, I love this book and I have not even started reading it yet. A Faith of Their Own, like Almost Christian, came out of the research done by a National Study for Youth and Religion. So, I know it is reliable, based on careful research, and that it will dig deeply into some of the newest insights on the religious lives of teenagers. I am excited to read it!

I have been trying for the last few months to get through several youth ministry books: The Godbearing Life and Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry. I am learning that even though I am no longer in school, that I need to keep up a steady diet of intellectual stimulation. Andrew Root's book was very challenging- he pushed my understanding of incarnational youth ministry to the breaking point. He uses diagrams (always a way to my heart) and draws on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a theological foundation for relational youth ministry. The books itself is very dense. But even that was not enough. I find myself wanting to take on a project.

The National Study of Youth and Religion's recent research has proved fruitful for many, and is causing people in colleges and universities across the country to reexamine their thoughts on the best ways to practice youth minsitry in light of what we are learning about the religious lives of adolescents in America. I think that I am assigning myself a large-scale research project: sort through this research and attempt to condense it into something user-friendly for youth workers. I love a good homework assignment- break out the white board!

Internalization Part 3

Internalization as Evidenced in Morality

My friend, co-laborer, and youth pastor at our church, Nathan Wagner, made several really great points about internalization on the last post. Nate makes the point that choosing God's way in any given situation out of trust and love for God is evidence of faith taking root. Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton put it this way in Soul Searching "Even though many teens said religion is important in their lives, it still seemed to us to be mostly part of the furniture in the background of their lives. ... Quite often, teens said they did not think their relgion affected their family relationships, they did not believe religion was relavant to the conduct of a dating relationship, they did not see that religion affected their life at school and so on." They go on to state that this was true of adoelscents who told the researchers that religion was very important in their lives. Clearly there is a gap in the undertanding and practice of Christianity, and this is evidenced in moral decisions.

Nate has a great point- that choosing an option that lines up with the teaching of Christ is fruit of internalization. I agree with him when he takes it further to say that this decision needs to founded and rooted in trust in God's character. It has to go beyond just actions, even though consistent patterns of action are fruit of what we actually believe. Some moral choices are moments when our true motives are laid bare, and being founded in the knowledge that God loves you and expects rightesouness is a poweful motive. Knowledge about God needs to lead to actions and thought patterns that demonstrate that His way is worth risking.

Is internalization the subtle ingesting of truth in a place where decisions are made?