I have loved all of my amateur studies into faith development. I find the subject to be of high interest to me. In this subject area I particularly love, Love, LOVE Stephen D. Jones’ faith shaping tasks from his book published in 1987, originally written in 1978, called Faith Shaping. I am continually recommending this book in every possible situation and quoting from this book frequently as it is the one book that has shaped my youth ministry views the most.

Since Faith Shaping was published in another era, I’m taking great liberties to share my learned insights from these faith shaping tasks mixed in with what is currently happening in youth ministry, or Youth Ministry 3.0 as it has been coined by Youth Specialties. We’ve been calling it Wild Frontier thinking since 1990. Despite the changes in youth ministry, the truth of these faith shaping tasks remain the same.

The Faith Shaping tasks are:

1. Experiencing
2. Categorizing
3. Choosing
4. Claiming
5. Deepening
6. Separating
7. Responding
   

The third Faith Shaping task is Choosing or valuing, deciding, and shaping a belief. This is the natural progression from categorizing as the teen chooses to believe what has been categorized as good, true, or what he/she likes. Say a teen girl has joined your youth ministry and has experienced faith through a retreat. She has categorized the experiences and then decided to believe that Jesus does offer a second chance She has chosen to believe that what Jesus offers is good, true, and what she needs in her life at this time. The big catch here is that she is not invested in this choice yet. This is a legit faith shaping task.

Truth is the desire to affiliate with the church or youth ministry is more often an emotional response. Teens Experience, Categorize, and Choose beliefs based on what is right for them in whatever current emotional state they are in. If they are in “love” with the boy at the party, they will choose what they believe is right for that situation. If they are in need of purpose, they will choose the belief that God has created them for a higher call. Emotional decisions are a large part of adolescent development. (This is why there are minor laws to protect them.)

We honestly don’t like to be a part of emotional decisions knowing there is power in those to manipulate. Yet so often youth ministry is planned to play off of emotions—for the greater good, of course. Much of Youth Ministry 2.0 was geared around that. This is one reason why so many new studies are showing that teens are leaving their faith and their churches when they enter young adulthood. They were never invested in their faith choices. Their faith choices didn’t go beyond their emotional decisions.

There has been a lot written, said, and marketed about these alarming new research numbers. What the research doesn’t show is that this is a faith shaping task. The research doesn’t show that teens are emotional and fickle. These are factors that have nothing to do with the state of youth ministry or the mistakes of Youth Ministry 2.0.

Part of Choosing is simply what Stephen Jones called “personalizing one’s faith.” This is a big part of middle adolescence development. It is similar to the adolescent development step of achieving emotional independence from parents and other adults. Personalizing one’s faith is creating a faith that is something of their own.

When teens are personalizing their faith, they come off as being wrapped up in themselves or self-centered. We’ve all seen the teen who is just flabbergasted that her mother stays over occasionally at her boyfriend’s home, and let’s her mom know of this sin at every moment she gets, while this teen drives her own car like a speed racer. Teens really are wrapped up in themselves. But it is just for a stage.

Choosing is different from Categorizing because their categories for their faith experiences do affect their lifestyles.

Our responsibilities to help these developing teens choose rightly with the Wild Frontier mindset are to once again create opportunities for youth to think through experiential teaching. Even Time magazine figured this out. “Youth ministers have been on a long and frustrating quest of their own over the past two decades or so. Believing that a message wrapped in pop-culture packaging was the way to attract teens to their flocks, pastors watered down the religious content and boosted the entertainment. But in recent years churches have begun to offer their young people a style of religious instruction grounded in Bible study and teachings about the doctrines of their denomination. Their conversion has been sparked by the recognition that sugarcoated Christianity, popular in the 1980s and early 90s, has caused growing numbers of kids to turn away not just from attending youth-fellowship activities but also from practicing their faith at all.” (Sonja Steptoe Bellflower, Time, October 31, 2006)

While teaching our youth to think we must also teach them to doubt rightly. I clipped this quote from Rick Lawrence a long time ago. "Doubt is a developmental necessity for an owned faith." (Group, January/February 2005) I used to dread doubt in my teens. My thinking was “Why go through the pain and struggle of doubt. Just trust me through it.” I now embrace doubt, challenge doubt, walk with them through doubt because I know they are Categorizing and Choosing and are along the way to Claiming.

As you know, doubt is always a part of the Christian life. It is not unique to adolescence. What is unique to adolescence is abstract thinking. Once Santa Claus brought toys on Christmas Eve and Jesus fixed everything. Abstract thinking means teens have figured out that Santa is Mom and/or Dad and Jesus has some gray areas which are hard to understand. This is on top of their very own bodies changing so much that they feel their bodies are also failing them.

It is important that you teach that doubt is a part of a growing faith. And that doubt is not an excuse for immoral behavior. Immoral behavior is detrimental to a growing faith. A good doubter will question everything around that doubt and learn through the process while not moving into a negative direction. As you know in your own growing faith, wrestling through doubts are some of the most memorable times in your faith story. Share your story of those times as you teach and counsel.

Like Categorizing, this is another step that the youth have to take on their own. However, you are that positive influencer to introduce them, or re-introduce them, to choosing the way of faith.