How are you being intentional about helping students develop an articulated faith?

We all have relational currency with everyone we encounter. I choose to spend a large amount of the available currency in each individual relationship with my youth focused essentially on helping them articulate their faith. That’s what we’re all here for, right? To help the young saints of our communities grow in their faith. One mark of growth in faith is the ability to articulate that faith.

In my opinion, articulation is a product of conviction and practice. My kids like to joke with me about what happens when I start asking questions. “Oh, here she goes again!” they’ll say. We laugh about it, but those questions are how I help them grow. Those questions provide them with the opportunity to articulate in a safe place what they believe. Sometimes those questions are directed at the group, and sometimes the question is more appropriate for an individual. It can be healthy to wrestle with issues of faith as a group and individually with proper support and encouragement.

I’m not referring to the equivalent of a firing squad that has them leaving their time with you feeling as if they aren’t Christian. I’m referring to challenging them in a healthy way to say what they know in their hearts or what they are learning as a part of their personal growth. They will say things that even surprise themselves; things that create more questions and things that spark strong convictions.

In addition to these opportunities to state what they believe within the community of the group and individually with me, corporate opportunities within the community of the church are powerful moments for the youth and the church body. Some of them have testimonies of faith that rival the lives and testimonies of our own faith stories. When they have come to a place where they are comfortable to approach this opportunity with even an air of confidence, our support, advocacy, and encouragement will be invaluable. We might even end up as their bulletproof vests, but that’s okay too.

The greatest gift of youth (and young adult) ministry in my life is to have the opportunity to advocate, encourage, and support my kids as they grow in their love for Christ and articulate their faith. I’ll take a hit and sacrifice a win for them any day, and I’m sure you’d do the same for yours.

Questions are better than answers. Most youth leaders fear the socially awkward silence that follows a question in a meeting. That pause is a golden moment. In that absence of aural noise, thoughts happen. Too often, we don’t give time for students to think through the truths we teach. It’s impossible for teens to internalize new ideas without time to process them. I began using the Socratic method in my teaching. This teaching style focuses more on processing questions than on finding answers. Questions need to be open ended, provoking the stillness needed to develop a response. Binary questions (those that can be answered yes or no) shut down thoughts and conversation. So I learned to shape my questions into those that couldn’t devolve into a one-word answer.

How you think is more important than what you know. At the same time I began developing my questioning technique, I saw a flaw in the educational system. This flaw focused teaching around memorizing and regurgitating facts. Teens weren’t being taught to think. Realizing the need, I began to organize logical trains of thought, much like the Pauline epistles. When considering a topic, I tried to consider what questions students would have from their perspective. Progressing logically through a subject helped model a way for students to reason through questions away from our time together. I began seeing youth using these skills outside of church.
The process is more important than the outcomes. Here’s the real kicker for this way of teaching. If you use this method, there will be uncomfortable moments. As you wrestle through some tough thoughts and allow your students to ask difficult questions, it will challenge both you and them. Those who look for an easy answer will be frustrated. I constantly remind my group that life doesn’t always resolve itself. Faith believes even when we don’t see the outcomes. We are called to work out our faith even into discomfort.

Warning: This way of leading discussions isn’t for everyone. It pulls teens from a pre-adolescent, concrete mindset into the abstract perspective of adulthood. As you introduce this method, the potential for frustration will be high. Acknowledge that what you are asking of your young adults is hard. Thank them for participating and encourage them for growing into a new way of thinking.

So, why would you do this if it has the potential to frustrate students? I get that question often from new parents. If today’s adolescents are going to be able to stand firm in their faith, they will eventually have to own it. All discipline causes discomfort at the time, but then it produces amazing results. If teenagers are going to be able to articulate their faith, they will have to face the discomfort of working through it for themselves.

As a result of their collective traits, with the fun and joy of working with these young men comes significant thought about intentional ways I can help them develop an articulated faith. Each and every week (and the communication/community touch points in between) I absolutely must be purposeful about my passing on of the faith.

Below are eight intentional ways I am helping students develop an articulated faith.

1. Putting myself in situations where my life of faith and their inquiries about faith converge.
2. Allowing my group to ask any question at any time about anything in order to re-narrate their questions around faith in God.
3. Send them various resources they can read and interact with in order to stretch their thinking and come into their own understanding of life and faith.
4. Help them develop a communal hermeneutic—a way to read the Bible as a community that gives them a framework for interpretation and application.
5. Be a visible presence at our church’s gatherings so they can see how important developing an articulated faith is to me.
6. Help them (by modeling it) with an ability to lean all of their past, current, and future understandings about the Christian faith up against what Scripture says about any given theme (if it does), what the church has believed through its growth over time, what their own abilities to reason help them conclude, and what the personal and practical experiences of their own faith help them understand.
7. Inspire them to see how their faith development and the ability to articulate that in both word and deed impact the world and participate with God’s mission in the world. In other words, help them try to finish any sentence about their own lives with the phrase, “for the sake of the world.” For example, I play football, for the sake of the world. I am going to study education in college, for the sake of the world. I am engaging acts of mercy for the sake of the world. You get the point.
8. Provide situational ways in which students can engage the narratives of this world. Every time we plan a day of serving in our community, we’ll spend time reflecting on that experience, and I’ll help them navigate through conversation as to what meaning they are making for themselves but in the context of the entire community/small group.

If we aren’t being intentional about helping students developing an articulated faith, then we are shaping and guiding students into spiritual formation for the mission of God. If we aren’t shaping students into spiritual formation for the mission of God, then we are most likely running a babysitting/recreation/daycare/etc. organization. Isn’t that the most offensive, unfair perception placed on a youth worker?