For about four years, right after high school and for a good part of my campus years, I taught the teenagers class in my local church. It was a season of opportunity that I’m glad God gave me. There was impact through that teaching ministry: teens were saved, character was shaped, pitfalls were avoided, questions answered, guidance offered, and friendships formed. I’m even still in touch with some of those teens and I rejoice to see some keeping the faith and growing spiritually.
Through highlighting mistakes there’ll be helpful lessons learned.
However, as with everything done by fallible people, my time as a teens teacher wasn’t without mistakes. With the benefit of hindsight, there are a few notable ones. In this article, I discuss ten of them. My aim isn’t to publicly bemoan certain actions in a period of my life. Nor is it my intention to present a bleak perspective of the entire ministry. Rather, my hope is that through highlighting certain mistakes, in what was otherwise a fruitful ministry, there will be helpful lessons learned by anyone reading this.
Without further ado let’s look at ten mistakes I made teaching teens in my local church.
1. I Prioritised Relatability and Likability
Generally speaking, teens don’t like a lot of people. So getting through to them isn’t the easiest task. They tend to be closed off, often rebellious, and even have their own vocabulary that excludes those who aren’t their peers. Trends are usually a significant part of how they relate to one another, again excluding others. It can, therefore, be quite difficult to reach them. This is exacerbated by the fact that teens tend to be disinterested in religious matters. One of the ways teachers use to bridge this gap is to seek to be as relatable as possible and resultantly likeable. Greater relatability and likability tend to be a marker of teaching success for many ministering to teens.
What is meant to serve as a conduit can become the aim.
The pitfall here is that what is meant to serve as a conduit can become the aim. Rather than being an instrument that makes room for gospel work, relatability and likability can easily become ends in themselves. Subtly, relatability became more important to me than reverence, clarity and conviction. My speech, conduct and content became shaped by what would be well received; and not always what was needed. These were fickle aspirations and ultimately sinful ones too. I had made an idol of those who I was to minister to; and, ultimately, I’d made an idol of myself.
2. I Imported Curricula Without Contextualisation
One of the things that I have come to appreciate over the years is the value of contextualisation. The biblical message isn’t different for different people. However, contextualisation acknowledges that that message is coming to a specific people, in a specific context, with specific challenges and questions. Thus it seeks to apply the word of God with specificity to them.
Contextualisation communicates the message of the gospel effectively.
At certain points when I was teaching the teens, I used curricula provided by our church. The problem with those curricula was that they were written by Westerners, with western cultural categories, language and even illustrations. One of the mistakes I made—at least preliminarily—was to wholesale import that content to Kenyan teens. I assumed that since they were good resources they were immediately good for our context. Now, it worked for some due to their upbringing and exposure. But it excluded more. This unintentionally created a disconnect between the Bible and lived realities of our teens.
As I now serve in my current ministry capacities and aspire to pastoral ministry, I continue to rectify such approaches. Contextualisation will always be needful to communicate the message of the gospel effectively.
3. I Stuck With Pet Topics Over the Whole Counsel of God
When teaching teens there are topics that either interest them more or simply need to be discussed repeatedly and extensively. There is great usefulness to doing this, especially considering my previous point. You want to bring the word of God to bear on the issues that most affect the teenagers, both generally and specifically. With these noble intentions can come the error of imbalance. Most, if not all of what is taught can be focused on these topics and there can be a failure to teach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:26-27; 2 Timothy 3:16-17).
I found that as a teacher I gravitated towards topics the teens enjoyed or had a special interest in, their issues and questions. This would often include relationships, peer pressure, academics, relationships with parents and careers.
The teens had strong opinions in some areas whilst being terribly shallow in others.
I was also in a context that placed an inordinate emphasis on demonology and spiritual warfare. This produced imbalance. The teens had strong opinions in some areas whilst being terribly shallow in others. They became shaped more by their—and my—preferences than by the Bible’s emphasis. The grander story of redemptive history and God’s self-revelation in the pages of scripture culminating in Christ Jesus was sorely underemphasised. God’s people need the whole counsel of God, not a curated subset. I wish I had given them more of that.
4. I Withheld Doctrinal ‘Meat’
While attempting to communicate simply to the teens, I made a mistake almost all teachers do, withholding the meat of God’s word and feeding the children on milk (1 Corinthians 3:2, Hebrews 5:12-13). Teachers usually underestimate the learning capabilities of the children and teens they teach. We might feel that complex topics should be left for the adults. While there is some truth to that (Hebrews 5:14), we shouldn’t entirely avoid complex doctrinal matters.
We shouldn’t entirely avoid complex doctrinal matters when teaching teens.
My implicit assumption was that these teens were incapable of theological depth. But this was misplaced. I mistook being simple with being simplistic. I oversimplified complex doctrines to the point of unintentional misrepresentation. Important theological topics were entirely avoided. This, coupled with a failure to teach the whole counsel of God, meant those teens were ill-prepared, lacking proper knowledge of the truth and a readiness to defend their faith from the various challenges they would face in adulthood. Scripture regularly calls the young to wisdom, discernment and understanding (Proverbs 1:4; 4:5, 7).
I should have sought to strengthen the teens by teaching them well.
5. I Made the Bible a Moral Handbook
It is easy with teenagers to make the Bible a how-to book. Teenagers are in a phase of life where they have a lot of questions and issues they’re figuring out. Telling them how to do certain things, respond to certain situations, what to say or what not to say, how to deal with their feelings and so on comes almost reflexively. It may seem like the most expedient way to handle their issues.
We’re told of who God is and what he’s done and only then what God commands us to do.
What can happen, as did in my case, is that while aiming at applicability we miss directing them to the substance that grounds that application. Paul exemplifies a proper approach in how he lays down spiritual realities and from them proceeds to tell us how to live. Perhaps Ephesians is the most famous example, with its first half addressing doctrine and the latter half general practice. Indicatives precede imperatives. We are told of who God is and what he has done and only then what God commands us to do. This helps prevent moralism, reducing the Bible to an instruction manual. Lessons often reduced scripture to practical tips and moral lessons. Christ became implicit rather than the explicit focus of the lesson.
Now having learned faithful exposition I would do it differently. Aim for Christ-centered preaching and through expository preaching teach the teens how to read the Bible for who it proclaims and not just for what they can do with it.
6. I Isolated the Teens From the Church
Teens ministries are usually well-intentioned. Generally, the aim is to offer age-appropriate teaching to these teens for the point in life that they are at. However, a significant harm that can occur is the isolation of them from the larger body of Christ. This creates a kind of church within the church.
This undermines the church being one body.
Though this wasn’t strictly my mistake, as it was part of the structure of the churches that I was a part of, it was one I contributed towards. We were content with teens ministry functioning as a silo rather than a pathway to congregational life. The church felt like something they would join later, rather than something they are a part of now. This was exacerbated by the constant refrain that they are “the church of tomorrow”. This undermined the church being one body. I also witnessed variously the reluctance or outright unwillingness of the teenagers transitioning to the “main church”. The perceivably dull liturgy they were later subjected to couldn’t match the fun of their teen classes. Nostalgically, they hung onto the latter. The separation we’d enforced didn’t help dissuade them from this perspective. Ultimately, it did much more harm than good.
7. I Treated Them as Perpetual Youth Instead of Preparing Them for Adulthood
Isolating the children from the larger church was a subset of a bigger problem, losing sight of them becoming adults. Just like some parents may think their children will forever remain their little girls and boys, so can teachers. In our interacting with teenagers as young people it can get lost on us that they are growing into adults. Thus we can fail to adequately prepare them. That is certainly a mistake I made. In addition to being instructed relative to their age and context, they needed to be prepared for adulthood.
We need to realise that the people we’re ministering to won’t be children forever.
Teen teachers need to realise that the people they’re ministering to won’t be children forever. There is an adult world they are going to have to enter—and God’s word is sufficient to prepare them for it. The imbalance I spoke of in my third mistake factors in here. Teaching teens the whole counsel of God is what is needed to meet their needs not only as teenagers but also to prepare them for adulthood.
8. I Settled for Good Behaviour Over True Conversion
In a world of rebellious teenagers who engage in all sorts of behavior, a calm and well-behaved one is a breath of fresh air. However, just as parents do, teachers can settle for good or improved behaviour rather than salvation. Good behaviour, especially in children, seems wonderfully proximate to the conduct of a saved soul. This is especially so when compared with the more explicit and excessive sinfulness that characterises our world. So we easily assume that well-behaved teens are born again.
Good behaviour is no replacement for salvation.
But good behaviour is no replacement for salvation. I have seen some of those good kids morph into more heinous versions than those of their peers. This merely reveals what was true all along. Outward moral conformity is no equal to the gospel-transformed heart. Rather than assuming salvation I wish I’d emphasised the gospel as strongly to those good kids as I did the bad ones.
9. I Didn’t Insist on Church Elder Involvement
Those who teach the teens are often young themselves, inexperienced and theologically untrained. Yet they function as the primary spiritual authorities in those teens’ spiritual lives. This shouldn’t be the case. Within the local church, that role falls to pastors and elders. They are tasked with shepherding the whole congregation under their care (Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:1-3). This includes the children and teens. It’s from these pastors that God will demand an account (Hebrews 13:17). Teens and Sunday school teachers come alongside to aid with their gifts. But are never meant to supplant this biblically prescribed authority in the church.
The children were secondary members and their parents the primary benefactors of pastoral care.
In the contexts I served this was unfortunately the case. Pastoral care for the children was infrequent and intermittent. It felt like the children were secondary members, while their parents were the primary benefactors of pastoral care and attention. The burden fell on teen teachers to handle a bulk of issues, a role we were woefully unequipped for. I look back at some of the counsel I offered and would do anything to take it back. There was a genuineness to it, sure. And I was acting within my competencies. But it was insufficient. The teens needed more frequent and faithful spiritual care from the elders in the church.
10. I Neglected the Primary Spiritual Authority of Their Parents
God has established households and put parents in authority over their children (Ephesians 6:1-3; Colossians 3:20). Their primary roles include directing the spiritual lives of their children (Deuteronomy 6:6-7; Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 6:4).
Often this is a role that parents abdicate and outsource to the church, especially the Sunday school teachers. I participated in this lopsided manner of doing things. The posture was already present in certain parents, and I lent myself to it by stepping into a position of authority that either didn’t or very sparingly involved them. It was partially out of ignorance as well as conformity to the prevailing circumstances. Either way, even if initially one-sided, I should have sought to, as much as possible, involve the parents in the training up of their children and emphasised that ours was merely a complementary role while theirs was primary.
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