"Coping with crisis as a parent of teenagers requires the-wisdom of Solomon and the patience of the Messiah."
"Understanding teens? It's just impossible! End of discussion."
"Don't tell me what my kids have done now. It is all I can do to cope with the day-to-day problems of living; don't add anything more to my plate. It's already way too full."
"You did what? l am embarrassed for you, and what is more, l am deeply hurt too."
These are voices of parents at their wits' end as they try to cope with their teenage children during moments of crisis. How should parents respond to such crises? How can pastors help teens respond to crisis?
How can the church be a positive influence during times of crisis? Research on teen problems is clear. Drag and alcohol abuse still rank first as the problems of greatest concern for teens, but their importance is diminished as they are joined by other emerging social concerns, such as peer pressure, AIDS, teenage pregnancy, and the age-old problem of identity.
Fifteen years ago one teen in five was concerned about the "generation gap," and reported that getting along with their parents was the greatest problem they had to deal with. But today only 2 percent still cite this as the most important problem facing their generation. Grim new problems now confront the teen generation: one youth in nine cites AIDS as a most important problem. In fact, problems facing teens are so pervasive that only about one teen in 20 appears to be in a blissful state of nonawareness of the problems confronting their generation.1
These are national public high school figures, but studies on Seventh-day Adventist youth also identify many of the same problems as being of great concern. While participation in most of these at-risk behaviors is below national averages, perhaps because of many youths in "protective" environments such as churches and church schools, still any involvement in these crisis behaviors is a signal for attention and concern.2
There are crises in relationships too. Most teens (52 percent) get along well with their parents, and are twice as likely to get along better with their mothers than with their fathers.3 Relationships of all kinds cause personal tensions. Parents often express how difficult it is to keep calm and rational in the face of an emotional teenage reaction to discipline, suggestion, help, or correction.
Teens in a real world
We live in a world filled with germs of a sinful, fallen, and broken culture. Many of today's evils didn't exist when the Bible was written, and many others were far less pervasive. In the religious sphere, youth too often state how irrelevant their Bibles seem to be in dealing with the "personal" problems they face. The teens intellectually know that Scripture contains principles that can help solve crises. They also know that a loving family grounded in scriptural principles can be a strong antidote in today's societal aberrations. But they don't see much compassion and application of principle in the faces of their angry parents or feel it in the disapproval of condemning church members.
Professional counselors and trained, experienced pastors have learned that it is not the type of counseling technique that is important for healthy change and redirection. The pervasive influence in all healing therapy is the need for under standing, meaningful, and healthy human relationships.4
Since the church is people, not buildings, budgets, or denominations, think what would happen if only five people in every congregation would reach out to one troubled teen or one family in the throes of pain and crisis, and show the same unconditional love God gives to us as a gift. Sadly, youth don't enter our churches looking for people like that. So it is imperative that we find ways to seek them out.
Issues of identity
The crisis of identity is not particularly a new concept. Most professionals recognize that the identity issues facing youth simply change style, not substance, during successive generations. Pastors, religious educators, and teachers work with individuals who are seeking identity and change all the time. Self-understanding takes time, but the fact that the teen is moving toward change aids the process. Teens in crisis explode with questions of identity (Who am I? Where am I going? Why am I here?). They need someone who has found his or her identity.
Knowing God, feeling God's presence, experiencing acceptance and feelings of belonging in the church go a long way to assuage the crisis in adolescents' lives that stem from feelings of distance, criticism, unacceptance, and rejection. Churches can be wonderful places in which identity is found. Being "in Christ" is more than a biblical passage. It is the essence of the Christian community itself. So take the temperature of your church. Ask members about the thinking climate on Sabbath morning, and don't omit the youth's opinions, either. If your church temperature is too cold, do something about it!
A related identity crisis issue that directly points to the church, pastoral staff, or membership is that of criticism. Young people feel that the church simply does not care for them. Valuegenesis showed that only 44 percent of the students felt their church was "warm," and 61 percent felt it was friendly.
Preparing for the crisis
Crisis in most people is created by failing to think about the alternatives at their disposal that can help them successfully deal with life's trials. What we need is appraisal. Think about a plan before a crisis comes. Help parents develop a plan of direction before their problems arise. As pastors, we should be aware of the nearest counseling program that deals with troubled youth. We should have information available on drug use. We may need a crisis counseling telephone hot line number. Keep the phone numbers of relevant youth resources and research centers nearby on your desk. We need to have Christian referrals ready before problems hit.
We probably need to create new Bible studies to deal with problem areas youth and young adults face loneliness, acceptance, friendships, criticism, com passion, etc. We need a list of publications and videotapes that we can refer parents 1 and youth to for help. We need to have Internet resources from which they can get help, such as the Parenting Resource Center on the Web @parentsplace.com or the Hancock Center for Youth Ministry @[email protected] where helpful ideas about youth in crisis are posted on a weekly basis. There is even a special place to look for when you need immediate help at KidsPeace @kidspeace.org.5 We must recognize that we alone can't do it all.
Reacting to crisis
Crisis is not necessarily a negative term. It usually denotes or dramatizes an existing area of conflict. It provides a chance to move beyond the problems that bring the conflict. Erik Erikson, the psychologist who made the term identity crisis famous, suggests that crisis is "a moment of decision between strong contending forces."6 Crisis can be therapeutic and lead to dynamic, forward-looking decisions. It is an acute period of time, or a situation which anticipates conclusive change.
In dealing with conflict, the most important thing we can do is to create a climate in which dialogue and communication are increased, not decreased. Once I had a particularly difficult day. I was rushed and felt pushed to finish projects already stretched well beyond their reasonable deadlines. Then my teenage son came home with his ear pierced and a gold stud challenging my anger. Immediately I was ready to reprimand him with a discussion on values and church standards about jewelry. It took the maturity of my son to point out my own problem. He wanted to talk. He wanted to understand. I wanted only to demand obedience. Luckily, after some reflection, I saw the picture. I began to listen. Of course, the earring disappeared in due time on its own; my son's values were intact, even though I feared the worst. And by this experience I learned that a bad reaction is never a cure to crisis.
Learning to listen is difficult, but it is one of the best gifts you can give to the youth.
Practical ways to help
Here are some ideas that may help you develop a proactive style to deal with the teenagers in crisis in your local congregation.
Help your teens develop skills in decision-making. Helping youth mature in their own thinking process is one of the most valuable skills a local congregation can provide. After all, when a crisis comes, teens must eventually make up their own minds about those issues anyway. The church can be a place in which this creative decision-making is modeled. Rather than telling youth what to do, instead, ask them what conclusions they have come to and how they have arrived at them. Avoid labeling and belittling. Saying such things as "What do you know? You're just a kid!" or "You're a disappointment to me" paves the way for a total lack of communication. Teens stop listening and no one gets heard when people they hope to respect are ordering, prescribing, and lecturing.
Be careful not to filibuster. Monopolizing the conversation and silencing everyone else is hardly a listening skill.
Assist youth in developing personal standards and values. Avoiding crisis is in many ways an educational problem. Helping teens understand what their personal values are can go a long way in avoiding the problems that face youth. When a teen knows his or her own standards and values, he or she can easily decide not to participate in activities that conflict with them.
Build a biblical basis for action. A balanced youth ministry is always biblically reflective. When I teach teenagers, I always try to direct them to biblical passages that relate to the issues with which they are concerned or that directly relate to the crisis confronting them.
A small group Bible study program for teens can go a long way toward preventing crisis through open, personal discussions about standards and values. Youth respect the authority of the Bible when it is opened up to them in warm, loving, and accepting relationships. Youth helping youth see what the Bible says about life, trials, and conflict is one of the best things they can experience.
Help build a biblical worldview. Our perspectives are influenced by our worldview or ideology. How we cope with crisis can be impacted by thinking clearly about our priorities. People who see themselves in a relationship with God often choose actions and lifestyles that stem from that basic reality.
Biblical doctrines are often the agency through which the ideology of God is explored. Sound, rigorous exploration of biblical concepts is essential, but for youth they must be couched in practical, relevant applications. This is the challenge. Proof-text approaches to crises won't work.
Merton Strommen argues that our theological orientation is crucial in determining whether or not we will learn significant values. A grace orientation with a focus on the love, promise, and presence of Jesus Christ inspires people to accept the lifestyle and ideology of Christ.7 What better place to explore our ideological views than in a congregation of friends and with loving mentors.
Valuegenesis research suggests that building this kind of rapport with adults may be difficult. "It would appear that a great opportunity for the transmission of faith and values is being missed. Only 22 percent of the fathers and 30 percent of the mothers were communicating personal religion even as often as once a week. Large percentages did so seldom or never."8
Relational retardation
A film producer recently described the crisis among today's youth in this way: "For too long, young people have been told that their greatest problems are drugs, sex, alcohol, etc.. . . These are, in fact, only symptoms of a much greater disease. The disease of youth is [that key relationships] are in disarray their relationships---with God, self, parents, friends, and the world."9
And if you spend any time reviewing the films teenagers are watching in theaters and on television, you will note that in many there are no adults with significant parts at all in those films. Mark DeVries, in his significant book Family-based Youth Ministry, suggests, "Characteristically, teenagers do not have the relational and developmental capacity to maintain a single, committed relationship for an extended period of time. They flow in and out of relationships with their peers. This year's enemy is next year's best friend."10
An increasing number of youth are entering adulthood without the skills to develop significant relationships with each other. They enter adulthood lacking the relational maturity to establish long-term friendships and relationships. How, then, can we expect them to build a meaningful relationship with Jesus as their personal friend?
The church has all the theological and philosophical resources to cure this problem. We preach that a relationship with Jesus is constant. His love and acceptance is not like this world's. We celebrate the nature of God's grace as all-sufficient and all-encompassing in spite of our partial commitments and failures. The love of God is a wonderful gift that models what humans might become. The church's gift to youth is one of inspiring what "might be" in their lives by seeing how God is at work among all of the membership.
Unfortunately, however, all too often the church is essentially an orphaning structure. It does not parent its members through life; rather, it orphans them at the very time they are most in need of a stable culture.
What a challenge! To assist before the crisis comes. To lead youth to Jesus as their caretaker when a crisis develops.
1. Robert Bezilla, ed., America's Youth in the 1990s (Princeton, N.Y.: The George H. Gallup International Institute, 1993), p. 32.
2. See Roger L. Dudley with V. Bailey Gillespie, Valuegenesis: Faith in the Balance (Riverside, Calif.: La Sierra University Press, 1992).
3. Bezilla, p. 34.
4. Gregory Monaco, "Can the Church Help the Troubled Teen?" Counseling Teenagers (Wheaton, 111.: Victor Books, 1984), p. 539.
5. See "15 Ways to Help Your Kids Through Crisis," @kidspeace,org, World Wide Web.
6. Erik Erikson, "Memorandum on Identity . . . ," The Journal of Social Issues, 20:4 (1964), p. 31.
7. Merton P. Strommen, "How Values Are Communicated," report to Project Affirmation, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists, Silver Spring, Maryland.
8. Roger L. Dudley with V, Bailey Gillespie, Valuegenesis: Faith in the Balance (Riverside, Calif.: La Sierra University Press, 1992), pp. 192, 193.
9. Charles P. Warren, quoted in Kari Torjesen Malcolm, Building Your Family to Last (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 1987), p. 77.
10. Mark DeVries, Family-based Youth Ministry (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), p. 50.
