If you are like me, you cannot wait until those children from children’ church become old enough to enter the youth ministry.  As excited as you are about those future souls you get to teach and influence is probably as nervous as those parents of those children are to watch their children become teens.  Truth is parents are intimidated to become parents of teenagers.  There have been too many parents-of-teenagers jokes, news stories, legendary stories, etc., to feed this fear.  To add to this fear we now live in this crazy, technological, and fast-paced world—a world which their child is way more adept with than they are.  For so many reasons, parents think they have lost what “training up a child” means when their child becomes a teen.  When kids were younger, parent and child could pray together at bedtime, maybe read Bible stories together.  But how do you do this with a teen?  How do you do this with a teen who doesn’t like you in his/her bedroom?   This is the intimidation parents feel.

This sounds like an awful idea. Ritual is a word many youth workers over the last 60 years have run from. Yet it is one of those special comforting things we can offer youth.

In a non-youth ministry book was this letter from a then 20 year old: “In the last six years I have come to feel strongly that parents need to spend one to one time with their teenagers. Ritualized time together, however long or short, allows trust to build in a healthy, deliberate manner. The ritual time I shared with my father (every night at bedtime until age 13, then ice cream out once a week) helped me connect with him as a respectful adult and parent, who, through it all, was there for me regardless of whether I felt like sharing my problems.” (Putting Family First, p. 79)

Ritualized time together is necessary for teens to survive through adolescence. When looking at youth ministry overall, we are built on ritualized times together. Our schedules are built on it. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed with schedules and programs. We sweat over the creativity of these times together so they are somewhat memorable. Sometimes we devalue Sunday School as not important when in reality this is truly ritualized time together. The times we teach from the Bible (again, why they are scheduling church into their busy schedules) and the relational bonuses of these ritualized times together are youth ministry.

We need to value our ritualized times we have with our youth.

“God’s original purpose is not our salvation or the evangelization of others; it is that we glorify God by reflecting God’s image through expression of the spiritual, intelligent, creative, moral and relational capacities uniquely imprinted on humans.  This creation mandate has never been rescinded.”  –Dick Staub, The Culturally Savvy Christian

More WF Lifestyle thinking…

Consumerist Compassion

“To get one of those beautiful bags, pair of earrings or bracelets made by women and children rescued out of human trafficking, you have to actually go and spend a week making them. Go and give that recently rescued sex slave a day off and you make the conflict-free jewelry that day. Go and be with her, hear her story, make her dinner, watch her children for one day. Then you would really have a story! “Merry Christmas, Mom. I worked for four days with former sex slaves to make your necklace. Enjoy!” Priceless.”

In honor of our twenty years of ministry and fifteen years online we decided to take a look at the Wild Frontier Wayback Machine.  Take peak at what we’ve looked like over the years.

Wild Frontier in 1995

Wild Frontier in 2000

Wild Frontier in 20001

Wild Frontier in 2003

Wild Frontier in 2006

Wild Frontier in 2009

Before it was cool to be green, we at Wild Frontier have been encouraging youth workers to at least put a Creation Care stat on their websites or newsletters to help connect faith to this important issue with teens.

From a survey of 1,003 adults, 48 percent believe the earth has undergone climate change before and current warming is not primarily caused by human activity.  (The Barna Group, September 22, 2008)

For more Creation Care Thinking…

Boxed Water is Better