Faith Without Risk Isn’t Faith
I’ve been a youth pastor for seventeen years, and one of the greatest no-brainers I’ve learned is this: If you want a student to continue in their faith throughout adulthood, they need to discover the faithfulness of God. That shouldn’t be revolutionary, but it was to me. You see, it’s not explicitly theological, and seems to highlight personal experience to such a degree that fellow youth pastor theologians would be skeptical.
One of the greatest evangelism and discipleship oversights pastors and parents have committed comes packaged in the form of safety. If they’re never invited to walk by faith, then of course they’ll leave religion behind. Why shouldn’t they?
One of my favorite quotes is a line from missionary pioneer, Hudson Taylor.
“Unless there is an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.”
Hudson Taylor
This quote, paired alongside Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s much-discussed reflections about the “world come of age” has come to significantly shape the way I think about faith. In short, I understand these references to highlight a world that is self-sustaining enough that mythology and spirituality are no longer the default explanations for the world’s phenomena. We explain natural disasters and diseases and meteor showers through science, while former generations described them as “acts of God.” In this sense, we are living in a world that’s “come of age.” We are all grown up. Independent from God, we move along each day without much need for spirituality to make sense of our daily habits. Even the surprises that come our way have their own reasonable explanations.
So tell me - where is the need for faith? Where in our teenagers’ world do they actually need God?
Is there any surprise, then, when students consistently (but timidly) confess, “I’ve never actually experienced God.” Everything in their lives makes sense. It’s a wonderful blessing that most of the kids in my youth ministry have a home and know where their next meal is coming from. To my knowledge, home is a relatively safe place. In this setting - when and where are students supposed to actually need God? They are safe, which is good. But where are they supposed to witness the provision and faithfulness of God, aside from as an abstract and spiritual reality? Perhaps this is why faith is more prominent among people groups who have experienced suffering and marginalization? As Jesus said, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)
Faith Without Risk Isn’t Faith
One of my struggles in this regard has to do with appropriate roles and responsibilities. I am my students’ youth pastor, but I am not their parent. Accordingly, there are certain challenges I could present to students that would put them in direct conflict with their parents.
This is why it’s absolutely crucial for youth pastors to have this conversation with parents. If they do not first understand and affirm the role of risk and challenge to their kids’ faith development, then that is a parent discipleship problem, not a youth discipleship issue.
As a father of teenagers myself, this is honestly a real challenge. I want my kids to know and love and trust in Jesus. I want them to learn from risks and challenges. But I don’t want to see them fail. As a parent, am I willing to address my kids’ struggle as an opportunity for their sanctification rather than as a negative experience from which to rescue them as swiftly as possible?
I keep returning to that Hudson Taylor quote, and I wonder how many of our youth group students don’t have genuine faith because they believe in God, but they don’t actually believe him. Their faith is just a good idea, but it’s not real.
Will We Walk By Faith?
If faith was easier, it’d be a lot more common. Christians would share the gospel with unbelievers more. We’d pray for one another in public rather than saying, “I’ll pray for you about that.” We’d have hard conversations instead of settling for niceness. We’d speak up for the oppressed and challenge those who perpetrate evil. We’d look and sound a lot more like Jesus than we do.
Hebrews 11:1 famously declares, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
This is an anchor for our conversations about faith with youth. Taylor and Bonhoeffer weren’t just making things up, they were reflecting on what the Bible teaches about faith and faithfulness. Faith is anchored in hope that God really will fulfill every promise. As we walk by faith today, we have opportunities to witness a foretaste of that fulfillment.
Inviting students to walk by faith can mean we equip them to share the gospel with their peers, and we begin to pray with them for opportunities to actually do it, trusting in the Holy Spirit’s prompting. It can lead students to either lead or participate in a Bible Study either before or after school, and inviting their classmates to attend. It can also prompt students to speak up for students who are being bullied and to fight for justice, but to do so in a different way than the world pursues justice.
When students walk by faith, they will discover that God shows up. It’s not always smooth or ideal. But God is at work even in those circumstances, too.
This is also a personal reflection for me. Walking by faith is hard. It’s scary and risky and uncertain. As I enter into a season of preparing to transition out of serving as a youth pastor in order to lead Youth Pastor Theologian full-time, I’ll admit I’m anxious. I’ll need to fundraise to have a salary to provide for my family and to have a ministry budget for YPT to fulfill our mission. But I’m absolutely thrilled, because I believe God. I trust that he will provide. During the months of discernment about this, one nagging question plagued me: “How can you challenge students to walk by faith if you know this is the Lord’s leading and you won’t trust him to provide?” (You’ll be hearing more about this in the coming months, but if you’d like to give or talk about sponsorship, please send me a message.)
Where do our students walk by faith?
Where do we?
Are we as youth pastors and as parents willing to see our teenagers walk in faith if it means God shows up through trials and suffering in their lives?
