Youth Ministry as the Parent of a Teenager

This article is part of a series about the youth pastor’s ministry to parents. You can find the rest of the series with the Partnering with Parents tag. For more about family ministry and partnering with parents, listen to our podcast episodes with Anna Meade Harris, Kristen Hatton, Jared Kennedy, and Walt Mueller.

My wife and I have been married for almost nineteen years and have two incredible boys who are fourteen and ten. If you notice the age of my oldest son, you will realize that this means that I lead teenagers at church and home. As a student pastor, I’ve always considered myself somewhat of a content area expert on teenagers. But I did not realize how much I did not know about raising teens until I was raising one myself. 

Parenting teens is not for the faint of heart. However, seeing my son worship, learn, and serve in our student ministry has been a blessing. Seeing him connect with other caring adults who love teenagers has been worth every second of adjustment for both of us as we have adjusted to him being a son and student at church. 

This has made me a better minister to the parents who entrust their teenagers to me each week. Parents and the church need each other. They need hope, advice, and encouragement as they raise teenagers. They especially need to get (or stay) connected with the local church through these busy and challenging years. 

Photo by David Emrich on Unsplash

Now that my wife and I are parenting a teenager, I have realized that I was wrong in some things that I previously thought about raising teens and I’ve begun to emphasize others aspects. 

Grace and Mercy 

I remember early in ministry, thinking, “When I get to parent a teenager, I will do a better job than most of the parents in my youth ministry.” Arrogantly, I thought parenting teens was more straightforward than the parents in my ministry were making it out to be. However, as I have parented one son through middle school, I have learned that I need to rest in God’s grace and extend that grace and mercy to others more than I expected. 

I no longer see parents as failures when I hear their teenagers' critical statements. If the family of God cannot have mercy for those raising children in this crooked world, then who can? As a parent, husband, and pastor, I must live out Colossians 3:13 as I follow Christ’s example, extend grace to others, and ask them to do the same for me.

Authentic Community

Raising teenagers can induce feelings of isolation and anxiety in parents' lives. I know this is true because I have felt these same feelings. There have been times when my wife and I thought we were the only parents dealing with a particular issue with our teenage son. However, after talking to other parents whom we trust, we learned that we aren't as isolated as we thought and that other parents were dealing with the very same issues. Parenting is hard, but thinking you are alone makes it more challenging than it needs to be. 

One of the most beneficial things my wife and I have done is to find couples who are committed to honesty and vulnerability. These couples come in two broad categories: those who have already raised teenagers and those who are currently raising teens. These relationships are based on openness and care for us and our children. Couples in the same stage of life can commiserate with our struggles, while older people can offer wisdom as they have already navigated some of the same struggles. 

Youth workers can create spaces for parents to connect with each other by giving them opportunities to discuss their successes and failures, ask questions, and learn wisdom together. Fostering a culture of openness and dependence on Christ for parents in your student ministry can increase hope and a desire for Christ through the ups and downs of raising teens. Parenting is easier to bear when we run towards Christ alongside a “great crowd” of other parents (Hebrews 12:1-2). 

Pay Attention

Years ago, my wife and I were encouraged to "Pay attention!" by a parent whose kids were now adults. That has proved to become among the best pieces of advice we received about parenting in the teen years. They made this pronouncement concerning being plugged into the life of your teenager. 

Only God truly knows what is in a person's heart (1 Corinthians 2:11). Paying attention to students can prompt conversations that allow adults (at home and at church) to see glimpses of what is in their hearts. As with my son, I want to know what makes each student tick, and what excites or frustrates them. The better I’m able to know my students, the more I’ll be able to develop a warm spiritual environment to cultivate spiritual growth. 

A Future Hope

Most parents want their teenagers to succeed in life. The world gives one version of what success looks like, but the Bible teaches a godly success that is very different. I struggle with this as a parent. My son is brilliant, but he has learning disabilities that mean he has continual struggles in math. I could focus on how he has only once finished a school year with higher than a C in math. My desire for my son to find worldly success could become an idol for me and lead me to become overly-critical of my son, which Colossians 3:21 warns against. 

So that my son doesn't lose heart, I point him to Jesus to find strength in his weakness – to keep pushing on to the true goal of holiness, and keep running the race, even when it's hard. I celebrate things like when he shares the gospel with and prays for a peer in his class, and then celebrates when that classmate tells him he was baptized last weekend at church. I celebrate that my son reads his Bible at night, not because I ask him to, but because he desires spiritual meat found in the Bible. Raising teenagers is not for the faint of heart. However, our hope is found in Christ.

My wife and I are not prioritizing worldly success, we are making disciples in my home and at church. I know these are not mutually-exclusive, but it’s easy for parents of teenagers to accidentally forget which is of greater importance. Now that I’m a parent of a teenager myself, I have more patience and grace when parents in church lose this perspective.