Introduction

I AM A PARENT ... AND A YOUTH PASTOR

You just don’t understand. You’re not a parent of teens. —Parent A to Youth Pastor B, who doesn’t have teenage children

As a young youth pastor, I hated it when parents of youth group students said this to me. It offended me greatly. It annoyed me. It made me angry. After all, I was the pastor of their teenagers, dedicated to my job and spending countless hours serving their children. I even tried to minister to and love these parents, guiding them on their journey, and helping the church partner with them. And ultimately, I tried to help them be the best Christian parents ever!

Today, as a parent and youth pastor of three teenagers, my perspective on this has changed … but it also hasn’t changed. Hence, this is not a module about the church or youth workers changing their entire perspective on youth ministry and working with parents. Nor is it necessarily a “how to work with parents.” In fact, I believe I was always sincere in my dedication to my job, my ministry to teenagers, and the endless hours I spent with my students. I have been and will continue to be up front about loving and ministering to parents, guiding them on their journey with their teenagers, helping the church partner with them, and enabling parents to be the best Christian parents ever. None of this has changed.

What has changed is my perspective on parenting and raising teens because now I, too, am a parent of teenagers. Consequently, how I do youth ministry and how the church works with parents has also changed. For me, raising teenagers is the most difficult job I’ve had. All those thorny issues that I, as a youth pastor, face with church leadership, senior pastors, challenging parents, and other families’ struggling youth is nothing compared to the physical, spiritual, and mental battle of raising my own teenagers. And let me say this for the record: I have great kids, a comfort that other people attest to constantly. In addition, my wife has been a family and marriage counselor for years, providing our family with the distinct advantage of a go-to therapist right under our roof. Finally, there are five interns who work with and serve our youth group who my boys can turn to with their struggles whenever they need help from a grown-up besides mom and dad. But even with all this remarkable support, raising my teens has still been the most difficult challenge I’ve ever faced.

Another experience that has helped shift my perspective on youth pastors and parents is that for the past eleven years we have had a youth ministry leadership development program for seminarians, allowing them to serve in our church as youth interns—like the ones who help mentor my own teenagers—during their three to five years of seminary. Through this program, I have seen from a parent’s perspective the positives and negatives of younger “youth pastors” dealing with students and especially their parents. It has forced me to think about what I hope the youth pastor, youth ministry, and church of my own teens would understand about me as a parent and what I, as a parent, would want from the youth pastor, youth ministry, and church. Similarly, it has impacted my approach to youth ministry within our church and how we connect with parents of teenagers. We can call it family ministry, intergenerational ministry, or youth and family ministry. The Orange movement has become a movement toward this model, and Fuller Youth Institute and its Sticky Faith movement have promoted a great deal of partnerships with parents of teenagers as well—all of which we have followed in our church in some way so that we are ministering to parents and not just their teens.

Because ultimately, nothing will prepare parents for raising teens, and incorporating them into the scope of our ministry can be a lifeline for many. A recent New York Times article stated that “raising teenagers tests the sturdiest adults, even and perhaps especially on good days.”[1] As churches and youth ministries, we need to understand the complexities and difficulties of being a parent of teenagers. Frankly, I see parents of younger children or infants, and I want to laugh. I envy them. I rebuke them. (Just kidding.) I just want to tell these parents that if they think infants or young children are hard, they have no idea what the teen years are going to bring. (And again, I’ve been told I have “good” teens.)

Now, the measure of “good” for me is character. A professor of mine once said in a class on counseling teens that your character is who you are and what you do when no one is looking. He applied it to teens, noting the dichotomy of how a teenager acts when their parents are around and when they are not around. I have expounded on this idea to say to teens I minister to that how you act, respond, and carry yourself when you’re in a non-structured environment (e.g., outside of school) where there are no consequences or discipline/detentions for your actions. When no authority figures are looking, that is who you truly are. This isn’t a foolproof methodology to judge a teenager’s character, but in my experience as a parent of teens and as a youth pastor, I get to witness adolescents when their parents aren’t around, when they aren’t at school, and often when they don’t know I’m observing them. And these observations can tell me a lot about someone’s character, but they can also tell me a lot about parenting.

Now, please note, these observations do not necessarily lead me to assume bad parenting or rotten teenagers. These observations do not necessarily imply that parents are absent or neglectful—although, at times, they can raise red flags that warrant my attention. However, as I do observe and work with teenagers, these observations have shown me that raising teenagers is grueling; that even the best parents cannot control how their teenagers are growing and developing. So what would it mean to parents if their churches and youth ministries could acknowledge how difficult this journey they are going through really is?

Throughout the course of these lessons, my hope is that greater empathy and sympathy can be nurtured for parents in our youth ministries. My hope is that deeper and more intentional partnerships can be ignited between parents of teens and the church. My twenty-year tenure at my present church has shown me that working with parents can be taxing. However, understanding the journey of parenthood has made my ministry to parents far more effective, powerful, and joyful. Moreover, understanding them as parents who are in the midst of a difficult job, rather than offering simplistic answers to difficult issues they face in raising teenagers, has made youth ministry so much more fruitful.

It’s ironic (now that I am a parent of my own teens as well as their youth pastor) that my new question when planning any mission trip, church retreat, youth group activity, midweek program, Sunday school, or youth group gathering is not “If I were a parent would I send my teenager?” but rather if I would, in reality, send my own teenager. The guesswork and the “If I were a parent …” questions are gone. Now, this may not be the best criterion for programming—nor is it the only rationale for how I shape our student ministry philosophy, how I gauge a youth group event, or how I coordinate youth group activities. However, as I have come to understand the church and youth ministry more and more from the perspective of a parent, I do think differently about how youth ministry is executed. At times, it has probably made me more cautious and prudent, but it’s also made my vision broader and sharper. All the pizza and fun games are still important, but they are seen through the lens of a greater importance, perhaps as a means to an ends. 

Similarly, as I’m nearing my mid-forties and twentieth year at my church (my twenty-fourth year in youth ministry), the way I see parents is very different from the way my team of seminary interns in their twenties view parents. Likewise, the way other youth pastors in their twenties want to minister to teens and the way I want my own teenagers ministered to are often at odds. This disparity isn’t necessarily a negative one but, in fact, has provided the church and our youth ministry greater opportunities to meet the needs of teenagers and their parents.

Over the course of this module, my purpose is to help churches, youth workers, and even parachurch youth ministries understand the lives and hearts of parents of teenagers. I’ll admit it isn’t a theological treatise on parents or parenting, nor is it a thorough scientific study on parenting. I’ve been trained both theologically and in social science research, so I do know the insides and intersection of these two fields of study. Rather, as I continue on my own journey as a parent of three teens and a youth pastor for over twenty-four years, I wanted to share my insights about the parents of teens and what I (and perhaps other parents) wish their youth workers and churches understood about parents of teenagers. Perhaps then churches and youth ministries could work with teens and their parents more effectively, with greater hope and with greater compassion. 

I can tell you from my years of youth and now family ministry, the hardest part of youth work for me has been dealing with parents in spite of my love for their teenagers. When it comes to teens, I love their passion. I love their energy. I love seeing their journey of faith and seeing that God can use me and our youth ministry to be a part of their journey. But, to be honest, working with their parents has been the most trying and difficult part of my job. 

A youth pastor friend once called me a “unicorn” because I’ve ministered in my church for two decades. I was tickled and kind of proud of that line, because youth pastors staying in one church for that amount of time just don’t exist—much like unicorns. And the truth is, while a typical youth pastor might move on from a given church in a relatively short amount of time for a lot of reasons, it’s almost never about the teenagers but is often about the parents.

Nevertheless, while working with parents has been the toughest part of my long ministry tenure at my church, it is actually coming to understand them that has helped me persevere over the long haul. Now as a parent of teens myself, my love and compassion for the journey of parenting enables me to embrace moms and dads all the more in youth ministry. And ultimately, it serves as a means to minister and love their teenagers more, which is, after all, why I remain in youth ministry.

Finally, let me say again to be clear that while parenting my own teenagers is hard and that dealing with parents has been one of the most difficult struggles for me in doing youth ministry, I have the deepest love and empathy for them. Well-known comedian Jim Gaffigan once said something like this: “If you complain about how difficult something is, it’s because you’re trying to accomplish something that is difficult.” 

And in thinking soberly about my journey in youth ministry and working with parents, it may indeed be something difficult that I’m complaining about. I’ve been trying to accomplish something difficult but remarkable with the parents of teenagers in our youth ministry, which is loving their teenagers and hoping to see Jesus in their lives during and long after they leave our youth group.

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[1] Lisa DaMour, “The Emotional Whiplash of Parenting a Teenager,” New York Times, July 13, 2014.