What's Wrong With Those Teens?

In my 30 years of ministry I have often heard "What's wrong with those teens?" come from the mouths of mostly the senior adults in the church. People often ask the same question about teens in the public schools or those around their neighborhood. Well, this past week I spent quite a bit of time with teens. My own two teens who are homeschooled and attend church well above the average, some teens from Vermont who attend public schools and do not attend church, and teens from our church which attend various places for education, including public schools, homeschooling and private schools. So I will attempt to answer the question: What's wrong with those teens?

Let me start with the Vermont gang first. We spent a week in Daytona Beach. We stayed in a relatively small condominium time-share resort with about 25-30 condos. One extended family with about 30 people total drive down from Vermont every year to spend a week in the Florida sunshine. With the exception of one 18 year old girl, none of these teens had ever met us or our boys. And the 18 year old had only seen us for a couple days about ten years ago.

These teens were all very polite and inquisitive. They made a point of including our boys in their activities and even invited me to participate some. When they noticed us in the hot tub or pool, they would come join in and start up a conversation or some type of game. They asked questions about us and shared things about themselves. And while a couple of the brothers did get into a spat while playing football, for the most part they were very pleasant to be around. I shared in a previous post about how the group included everyone, even those who were younger or older or not as skilled. And most of the teens would stop by to talk to my 75 year old parents because they see them every year in Daytona.

After spending two weeks with my own boys, I can tell you that they also are very well mannered teens. I observed them allowing others to get in line ahead of us at Disney so that families could stay together; I watched them interact with total strangers in polite and sometimes comical manners; and they talked to me about current issues in music, politics, church and more. And they were part of the group who made sure that everyone was included even if it meant their team might lose the game.

The last group was our church teens that I hung around on Sunday. I rarely get time to spend with anyone not involved in the music and worship ministry of our church. That is one of the reasons I chose to start teaching a small group Bible study in our home...of course almost everyone who attends is involved in the music and worship ministry or a spouse of one who is. But since I was still on vacation I decided to attend the youth Bible study classes with my boys (after I got their permission). The class is taught by a relatively new couple at church and my boys are constantly telling me all the exciting things going on in their class. They love having them as teachers.

The class is all about prayer. Not something you would expect in a youth Sunday morning bible study class. And pray they did. After spending some time sharing prayer requests, a young teen prayed for these and prayed with such wisdom about each of the requests by memory. He did forget one about his own friend, which somebody mentioned when he was done and he suddenly shouted out his prayer for his friend concluding with something like, "how could I forget my own friend. Forgive me Jesus." There was a lot of energy in the group from the beginning of class through the end. You could tell that they really want to be a part of this class. The class concluded with the group standing in front of the church office as they each prayed for the ministers and staff of our church.

So what is the answer to my original question? I would have to say that nothing is wrong with them. Every teen that I spent time with during this past week impressed me beyond belief. Are they perfect? Of course not, but if we were to listen to the mainstream media or listen to the critical comments from some senior adults we would think that their is no hope for our youth. Think of the times that they live in and yet see how strong they remain. It is the adults who have allowed things to get to the point that they have, not the teens. With few exceptions it is adults who control the government, the media, the fashion industry, the social media, and the entertainment industry. So maybe my next post should ask: "What's wrong with those adults?"