I’m a father, but not of a teenager. My five-year-old, however, often has the emotional regulation skills and bandwidth of patience as the average thirteen-year-old. I will regularly come home from a very long day at my teaching job at the middle school, which can feel like a war zone, into a very similar battlefield at home. In many ways, it would be accurate to say that I act in a parental role to more than two hundred teens on any given workday.
In my almost thirteen years of serving in public education, nine of which were teaching and mentoring teenagers at the middle and high school ages, I’ve often wondered: why do I keep coming back to this? Especially when the stories they tell are crazy. I don’t understand their Gen Alpha slang, I don’t have a TikTok account, and no, I am definitely not ready to hear about how they created a shrine to Aphrodite in their closet and pray to her, hoping she’ll help them win back their boyfriend (true story). Subtext: what on earth is wrong with me?!
But in all seriousness, the teenage years, and especially those early, prepubescent days, can be some of the most volatile times in a person’s life here on earth. From a developmental standpoint, the mind, body, affections, spirit, social skills, and relationships undergo massive amounts of change in such a short period of time. Hence, the volatility.
I remember being a teen very well, which is partially why I feel like I understand teenagers. I remember what it was like to be in a place in life where every dream felt a little bigger, emotions were beasts to tame, and every action had some degree of social and political maneuvering to it. I remember not liking the stereotype of what a “teenager” was supposed to be at all. It is easy to assume nobody gets you when you are a teen. And I think there’s some truth to that. Most adults have lost touch with their teenage selves, thinking they’ve moved past that reckless time in their lives. How many of us adults would readily admit that some of the things that happened in our teen years still haunt us? Still shape who we are? How many adults would be willing to say that pieces of themselves still live back in those capricious years?
Not many, I think. But it is true, and most teens have a deep desire to be seen and understood. We adults don’t get them. But what if we did?
In this post, I’d like to unpack three things that I think are absolutely essential when building rapport with teenagers and priming them to hear and potentially receive the Gospel. These tips come from years of working with teenagers, yes. But there’s also a sense that these targeted evangelism strategies come from some deep place in my heart: a place where a teenager still lives.
Be Who You Needed Them to Be
We all remember that person who first crushed our spirit. The one who made a comment that hurt us, criticized or judged us, turned us away from a budding passion or made us feel more alone and less understood than when we began. Maybe this person was a teacher in your life. Perhaps they were a parent, guardian, sibling, or friend. Maybe this person was your youth pastor or other spiritual leader. Regardless, the universal thread is that we all have encountered someone who discouraged us greatly. What we really needed was encouragement to grow up in a healthy relationship with our Creator and embrace His identity for us. My experience is that most teenagers today have either already had a negative influence or they will shortly.
My first recommendation about being a proactive missionary to teenagers is this: be who you needed and don’t be the kind of adult who hurt you.
My entire mission as a teacher can be summed up as an attempt to be different than the types of teachers I had growing up. I didn’t have amazing teachers to inspire me; I survived and thrived in the world despite many unpleasant experiences in my youth. My evangelistic efforts in my life and work with children are all aimed at being the type of adult I needed when I was their age. So, how do you become the kind of teacher/ mentor/ parent/ spiritual leader you needed most as a teen?
Get in touch with your inner teen. Remember. Ask and listen.
Did you need someone to gently correct instead of aggressively condemn?
Did you need someone to be patient, not raise their voice, not set you on edge and make you withdraw?
Did you need someone who acted like they at least cared a little about your crazy ideas and impossible dreams?
Step one: be that.
Truly Listen in Active [Not Passive] Ways
For years, researchers have been studying the effectiveness of good listening in the classroom, even as the term “active listening” may be difficult to define fully. Not only do students need to be good listeners to their teachers, but children need to be good listeners to the adults in their lives, and we adults, in turn, need to be good listeners back. But it's also so critical that listening skills be modeled well and explicitly taught.
I have attended countless staff meetings where the adults recount the trials of the day and how the kids “just did not care and would not listen to a word I said,” but then those same adults turn around and play on their phones or talk over our supervisors as they present important information to us? We are the problem, too.
Listening well is a foundational, Christ-like skill to have as a believer. The best humans are the best listeners because they take in the world and understand it from many angles.
Scripture encourages us to “let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” (James 1:19-20)
Teens feel discounted and dismissed. We wonder why they are always on their phones, but how many times in a given day does an adult respond to a teen without tearing their eyes from a screen? We are modeling, training, and informing the ways in which our teens should listen to others, and we do this every time we make the choice to either listen well or listen poorly.
So, without shame and judgment (I am more than culpable in the passive-listening scandal of this current American culture), how do we fix this?
Here is a quoted section from research by (Kluger & Itzchakov, 2022), and I believe these strategies are where to start:
“The better the listeners’ attention, comprehension, and intention, the more likely they are to engage in observable behaviors signaling good listening to the speaker. Overt signals of good listening include paraphrasing, reflecting feelings, asking relevant (and ideally open-ended) questions, and asking for clarification or repetition where needed. They may also include following a receptiveness recipe, such as hedging, that indicates a nonjudgmental attitude, keeping silent for a few seconds after the speaker completes their speech turn, and, perhaps, asking sensitive questions.”
Look for Connections to the Gospel in Unlikely Places
Okay, so this is all well and good, but what about actually sharing the Gospel with teens? Where does spiritual formation come into play, and how can I get these teens to give their lives to Christ?
Herein lies the misconception. We cannot get anyone to give their life to Jesus. That work of calling and convicting and convincing belongs to the Holy Spirit (See John 15-16). We cannot save our teenagers and their generation any more than we could save our own.
But as far as spiritual formation goes, that is exactly what I’ve been encouraging throughout this blog! All evangelism centers on a relational axis. To tell someone the good news, you don’t have to know them - but it sure helps! People are more likely to respond favorably to those who show kindness, who listen first, and who model Christ-likeness and patience. In my experience witnessing to teens, showing them my zeal for the Lord through my love for them and their idiosyncrasies, has often been the catalyst for the Lord to do amazing work in the lives of these young people.
Embrace the quirks. Look for ways to connect even in the mundane. Does the teen you’re talking to (and you are, right? Talking with them?) love superheroes and comics? Great! Start there. What is it that you love about heroes? Do you like the truest, purest heroes or the anti-heroes best? We can find both in the Bible!
So many amazing conversations simply begin with, “You know, what you are saying reminds me of….” and then you fill in the blank. The most recent time I witnessed to a student of mine, I was using the work of Christian graphic designer Scott Erickson to engage her imagination and tell her stories from Scripture through his pictures!
Recommend a book that inspired you instead of giving a lecture on good moral behavior. They may be able to learn it from a book or a movie or a story from your life better than if you told them plainly what to do! This is the contemporary equivalent of Jesus’s telling of parables. Find the road into their heart, and they might just ask you to walk alongside them.
Source: Kluger, A. N., & Itzchakov, G. (2021). The power of listening at work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 9(1), 121–146. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012420-091013
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