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Geoff StewartMore Posts Caught Not Taught: 6 Lessons Students Must Learn From Our Life Part 1: Conflict

We are embarking on a 6 part series of topics that we need to teach our students through our lives and actions. Students seeing them lived out first will bring integrity to the message we preach.

A few days ago I wrote a post about Conflict In The Internet Age and the growing reality of students who are lacking the skills or in many cases the desire to engage in healthy conflict or disagreement due to the messy nature of interactions like this. In addition to my previous post about a generation that doesn’t have to put up with anything they don’t like here are a few more considerations with conflict:

We Throw Away Things That Break: In my office at work I have a 1938 GE Console Radio (picture below). I love the craftsmanship that went into it. To think that every one of them was made by hand is amazing. No robots, not injection moulds, just hard working people putting tender loving care into it. My grandpa had one just like it and you know what he did if it broke or needed repair? He would load it in his car and take it down the road to the local radio repairman to have it fixed up. We used to fix things. TVs, VCRs, Toaster Ovens you name it, people fixed them. Last year my printer ran out of ink, I went to buy a new cartridge and sure enough, it was cheaper to get a whole new printer with ink in it, so I threw away the old one. If my computer monitor breaks it’s going in the garbage. My ipod? Garbage. My TV? Garbage. My Jeans? Garbage. When things break, we throw them away. So are we surprised when a friendship breaks down that students simply throw them away for a newer, better one?

We Celebrate Conflict, But Rarely Reconciliation: Celebrity gossip and sleaze is a multi-billion dollar industry employing countless people whose sole job is to get the latest dish on peoples favourite celebs. Conflict may not make them famous, but it sure can keep their name in the press. This culture loves a good fight and some good ol’ fashion smack talking. We celebrate the conflict, but how often does our culture celebrate reconciliation?

We Need To Be Champions Of Reconciliation: This is where we come in, where our lives need to reflect the values in Matthew 5 on forgiveness and reconciliation. How this is lived out will reflect our ability to be “the adult” when it comes to challenges with students. If there is a student you know who is frustrated with us, or with something we said we need to be on the front line of engaging them. Not because we want to be liked, but because like my grandpa’s old radio, it is worth the time and energy to fix it. Throwing it away might be easier, but the costs are high. Students need to see how we handle criticism, how we handle an angry parent, or a leader who is not leading well. When it comes to students who have been hurt by other students, it is our responsibility to equip them with the tools and provide objectivity so that they can work out their differences. This could mean very persistent and intentional communication with both parties to help them see the value in meeting. We must champion this value.

So What Do Students See In Your Life: Are you are the type of person that doesn’t get along with a lot of people? Are you a relational Tasmanian Devil going from person to person and not seeking to right your wrongs or ask forgiveness for your words or actions? Or are you a leader who can admit they were wrong, ask forgiveness of a student or leader when required. Are you a leader that will give up your time and make every effort to help a student navigate the deep valley of being hurt by a friend and walk them through a path of Biblical reconciliation?

We have enough of the first type of people, we need the second kind. We need humble leaders who aren’t perfect but can admit when we’re are wrong and whose lives reflect these values.

Are you modelling conflict and reconciliation well for your students?

Geoff – twitter geoffcstewart

Add Comment January 23, 2013

Geoff StewartMore Posts Honouring Adolescence

Do you know someone that has a job and you think to yourself, how on earth do you do that all day? I used to know a guy, who worked at a plant that took whatever parts of the pigs, chicken, fish and other animals that were not good enough for hot dogs. They would take these parts and add in deep fryer oil, feathers and who knows what else, boil them, heat them and do all sorts of horrifying processes to them and somehow render them into useful products and chemicals that they sell to other companies. I often asked him, how do you do that all day? He of course, really liked what he did, he turned waste in to useful things and loved it.

The strange part is, I have people ask me all the time, how do you work with teenagers? They are impossible! Its true, students can be really challenging to work with, they are often passionate, sometimes unreliable, regularly fickle, occasionally emotional and changing daily. I can see how youth workers tap out after a few years. When people ask me how I deal with working young people I will remind them, that it often starts with honouring their adolescence and appreciating the way they see the world. Here is a few ways we can do that as Youth Pastors.

Acknowledge their feelings: My life does not hang in the balance of the status of my friendships or what my friends think of me but there was a time in my life where I did feel that way. So when a student comes with their world crashing down over a problem with a friend, telling them to get over it likely won’t help. Acknowledging that you understand how they could feel that way, but also following up with some sound Biblical perspective on the challenges they are facing.

Harness the Passion: High School students are passionate, its up to us to help them focus that passion. Whether into local missions work, justice projects, service or anything like that. Students have more time than money, we need to help them find ways to invest what they have in a way that is productive, God honouring and fruitful.

All of us were that age: When adults try and knock teenagers for being crazy about Biebs or 1 Direction I remind them about the Beatles or NKOTB. When parents talk about students listening to sexualized music I ask them if they remember anything about the movie Grease? I was a teenager, my parents were teenagers, Jesus was a teenager. We can not forget what the world looked like through the eyes of teenage us, our idealism, flippancy and constant wonderment of “who is going to be there” before committing to anything. We were not that different.

Its so important that we as leaders not dismiss the challenges of teenagers as trivial or inconsequential, but instead help them navigate, and understand what scripture says about what they are going through and help them realize that there is more to life than this, but we can understand why at this point, they might not see that.

-Geoff (Twitter)