The tasks of Faith Shaping is probably the sole reason why I’m still in youth ministry 28 years later. I love seeing the light turn on in the hearts of teens. Teens are in that wonderful (it does have days of wonder) season of life where they are moldable while in the process of making true life decisions. And honestly, I love being an influencer in that. I particularly love moving around the members of my church family to help the teens go through the Faith Shaping Tasks. In doing that I’m doing my job better and I still get to see those lights turned on. And yes, this is really all about me and the joy I have. While I don’t want to lead a Brenda-centered youth ministry with everything centered on me, I do want personal joy from the work that I do. And being a part of shaping the faith of teens does bring me joy.

So from my love of faith shaping, I appreciate this quote. Chuck Bomar, founder of collegeleader.org, in referring to the faith development of teens wrote, “I think the biggest way we push students into foreclosure is that we automatically teach conclusions. As adults, we’ve thought through faith, and we’ve thought through what it is we believe and why we believe it…and then we come to conclusions. Then we come to our kids and we teach them our conclusions, and then we teach them how to apply our conclusions. By doing that we tend to rob students of a healthy faith development process.” (“Riding the Highs and Lows of Teenage Faith Development,” Fuller Youth Institute, November 2008)

What a great reminder. Faith development is a process. And I have role in shaping that faith. But no part of my role should be to teach my conclusions.

When you think about it, teaching our conclusions is a default mode. One default is because it is a much easier way to teach. There is the natural progression of the beginning, the middle, and the end. In that progression, we get the opportunity to share our wisdom which feels like we are being more effective–especially when we can pass on that one wise nugget we are passionate about. However if we are not cleverly careful, we will also teach our conclusions.

Another reason for defaulting to teaching our conclusions is we love our teens. Because of my love for the teens, I’d like to spare them my painful lessons of growth and share the wisdom I’ve learned from those painful lessons of growth. It is much easier to teach, “This is the way of faith that I’ve learned. Now walk as I did and you will have success,” than it is to teach, “God loves you and created you with a purpose. Now walk out your faith and see what God teaches you.” One way is teaching to our conclusions. The other is pushing our teens into a healthy faith development process–one where I may watch them stumble and get hurt. It is hard to watch that. Yet stumbling and learning is just as much a part of Faith Shaping as watching a toddler learn how to walk and seeing him fall down over and over again only to get up and meet his destiny as a walker.

To avoid my personal pain, I could easily fall into the habit of teaching my conclusions and not teaching about the lessons learned on the way to Faith Shaping. But I choose not to. And I have to remind myself to choose not to. It is an easy habit to slip into.

I read somewhere (can’t remember) that there are two kinds of teaching methods. One is to teach in a circle. When teaching in a cirle you don’t know where the lesson is going to end as circles don’t have ends. But the advantage is the depth of discussion. It’s hard to default to teaching conclusions with all this directed discussion. The disadvantage is it can be messy. I don’t need to describe that as we’ve all been in that situation at least once.

The other teaching method is to teach in a line. This is the first, second, and third point messages. The advantage of teaching in a line is breadth of content as we can know what we want to teach and have the means to bring the teens to that point. The disadvantage is the content may be tuned out because the teens aren’t asking the questions that match what you are passionately teaching. They may not be asking questions at all.

Both kinds of teaching are needed in youth ministry and it would be wise to incorporate both kinds in a balanced approach. But what is not needed is teaching our conclusions without including the teens to learn for themselves along the way of faith shaping.