GUEST POST: 5 Ways to Make Your Teenager Indifferent to God

on March 7th, 2010

In youth ministry, one of the hardest things I’ve had to experience is leading students into a growing relationship with Jesus, while their parents are doing the opposite.  In a lot of cases, the parent wants the best for his/her teenager.  It’s just that their definition of “best” might not match up with mine.  There are some hard-and-fast rules to engage if you don’t want your teenager to care about God.  The following are just a few.

1. Make sure their extra-curricular activities are priority over church. You should always make sure that their scholarships are intact, and that they don’t get kicked off the team.  That’s definitely more important than their relationship with Christ and eternity, for that matter.

2. When your teenager screws up, ground them from church. Of course! If they don’t care that you take away their TV, cell phone, or friend time, hit them where it hurts.  Take away church.  Yeah – that oughta do it.

3. Don’t call them out when they need guidance. Always let them make their own mistakes.  And if they’re about to do something super-destructive, it’s probably best that they learn on their own.  Because learning it the hard way is always the necessary path, right?

4. Talk negatively about your church staff around your teenager. If your pastor messes up, make sure that you call a family meeting to roast him.  You should definitely let your teenager know that people can’t be trusted, especially incompetent church leaders.  Your teenager needs to know that trusting church leaders isn’t smart!  If they don’t trust church leaders, there’s a small chance they’ll ever accept God’s direction in their life.  And that’s the safer way to live.

5. Don’t model real faith. At the end of the day, the last thing you want to do, if you want your teenager to ignore God’s voice, is to follow it yourself.

Please know my heart on this issue.  We parents need to be leading our families to Jesus every chance we get.  Maybe it’s time to take inventory of who or what we’re actually leading our families to.

After all, actions speak louder than words.

Mark Cox is the Student Pastor at Indian Springs Baptist Church. Stalk him at his blog www.thinknextnow.com or on Twitter @markhcox.


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Comments (8)

Theresa Haskins at 6:23am March 7

Your words are absolutely correct! Although a tad dfficult to swallow, right on the mark! I have found that when I make a mistake, I TELL my children I did (and allow THEM the opportunity to show grace – just like me!). Parents have so much more time with their children, we MUST model the way! Thanks for your honesty (our virtue in Children’s ministry this month!).

Mark Cox at 9:50am March 25

Chyrisitna,
Sorry I am just seeing this for the first time. I’m not tech-savvy enough to be able to subscribe to the comments so that I see them immediately, but here are my thoughts.
I understand your thoughts completely, and even agree with them to a certain extent. In my region (central Arkansas), we sit in the fat of the Bible Belt, in which everyone is a Christian, or at least thinks they are. My tone is extreme on purpose – that purpose is to help wake people up. If it makes people angry, I’d at least appreciate that they start thinking critically on some of these issues. I’m not a stranger to apologies, and I’ll make them when necessary. However, my intent is never to show students how lame their parents are. That’s not the case. The target of my post is to help parents see that some of their actions are having negative effects on their childrens’ spiritual lives. I’ll dive into answering your questions…

1. I think David said it best above. My intent isn’t to inspire every student to quit the team. In fact, this past winter, I had a student tell me that they felt they should quit the basketball team, so they could focus on God. My advice to this student was to stay on the team, so he could be an influence, but keep God the priority the whole time. Not to mention, he’s taller than I am (I’m 6’3″) and will most likely be playing college ball. It’s not about what you don’t do. It’s about what our priorities are.

2. I apologize. The sarcasm in my post probably muddied the waters a bit. Our students do need to learn some lessons the hard way. However, the absence of parenting is what I’m referring to. In the Bible Belt, parents tend (not all, but some) to pawn the spiritual direction of their children off on the church. You and I both know that’s unhealthy. A lot of parents aren’t parenting. They’re friending. That’s what I’m referring to.

3. “Real Faith,” as referred to in my article has everything to do with matching your actual commitments to your verbal commitments. When a parent says to a child that they want them to be involved in church, yet they won’t commit themselves, I would call that fake. Craig Groeschel has a new book that just released, called, “A Christian Atheist.” The subtitle goes something like this – “Believing in God but living as if you don’t.” That’s the idea here.

Let me make myself clear. I’m not bashing parents – I really do desire to partner with the family. Sometimes you have to be harsh to get your tone across. That’s the tone I chose. Thanks for calling me out, though. I deserve to be checked up on.