TEENAGERS!

...said with the typical inflection, TEENAGERS!
They can drive ya nuts. They are entirely unreasonable, demanding, unwise, rebellious, frustrating....
Well, at least some of them are at least some of the time. I love teenagers. My own and other peoples'. I think they are passionate and fascinating and smart and brave.
One of the things I love about our church, Metrosouth, is that it is a youth-driven ministry. It started as a youth group in our pastor's basement and it remains a youth group with a few older people thrown in around the edges. And these TEENAGERS bring out the best in us. They are completely informal in the way they dress for church. Jeans, hoodies, piercings. Like somehow they think that Jesus isn't impressed with outward appearances. They are wildly physically passionate worshippers who will rush the stage and stand on tiptoes and stretch out awkward half-child/half-adult arms toward heaven and yell and sing in off-key voices. As if God would receive such undignified worship. They run up and wrap each other in such hard embraces that they regularly knock over the recipient of their affection. Like Jesus ever touched people. They wash cars and collect bottles and beg for money to go to Thailand or Chicago or anywhere else they have enough gas and cars to get to and touch dirty people and feed hungry people and love lost people. They don't realize that Christ never hung out with "those kind" of people.
It's actually parents I don't get. I hear about kids who are in real spiritual trouble. Some of their trouble runs so deep it's destroying their families, their academics and their futures. The parents will go to therapy, parent-teacher conferences and read books and do online searches. I don't get 'em. Why not try to find a church that the kid will respond to? Why not sit in a rock and roll church that makes your liver vibrate in exchange for watching your kid reach his own awkward hands toward God?
Why are you sitting in churches your kids hate where youth are expected to be seen and not heard? Where there is no love, only judgement extended to the pierced and hoodied and scowling?
Maybe this isn't you and maybe it isn't your church. I hope it isn't. But if you are a parent of a teenager who is not full-on in love with Jesus and you are dragging them to a church they are obviously not responding to; I just don't get you.
Are you trading your preferences of style for your kid on Sundays?
I don't need to know the answer to that question. I just hope you do.

Get the word out. Teach all these things. And don't let anyone put you down because you're young. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity. Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching. And that special gift of ministry you were given when the leaders of the church laid hands on you and prayed—keep that dusted off and in use. 1 Timothy 4:11-14, The Message Bible