*Editor’s Note: Dr. Tamara Turner is the Chief Executive Officer of Quality Education Academy, a premier public charter school in North Carolina. She is also a Christian who teaches Bible classes and cares deeply about the spiritual survival of the younger generations. Below, Dr. Turner gives six insights she’s learned from helping to disciple the next generations.
Aren’t kids amazing? I love how real they are. They’re honest. They’re unvarnished. I’m one of the people that likes it when people just give it to me straight, and that’s one of the many reasons kids are my favorite people. After 25+ years of working with kids in a professional and volunteer capacity, here are six tips I want to offer for how we can connect with them and help them follow Jesus.
1. Be honest.
You know who besides me likes honesty? Kids themselves. The emerging generation and really all those post Gen-X (my generation) are starved for authenticity about life’s struggles. And not for a “Hey we all sin, so sin is no big deal” type of glossing over the issues. Rather, they’re hungry for honesty about the real struggles of the Christian journey. As an educator, I’ve noticed that young people have been drawn to trust me because I’m honest with them, and I want to suggest that the more honest you are, the more they will find you helpful and trustworthy.
2. Remember your identity.
You can’t truly be honest about who you are and what you’ve experienced in life if you don’t take the time to know who you are. We have to be comfortable in our skin. For one thing, this means knowing that God’s grace covers us and our sin debt has been paid. It also means aiming to live what we say we believe. Young people often cite hypocrisy in the church—people who are merely actors when it comes to the faith—as a major reason they stop going to church.
This tends to be a “kicker” for those aspiring to teach and mentor young people: We really are terrified of being exposed and can end up faking it. Yet young people can smell a fake a mile away—fake nails, hair, make-up magic. I mean, their generation was raised on filters and AI! Remind yourself of who you are in Christ, find security in that identity, and from that security you can help them find their own worth and identity in Christ.
“Remind yourself of who you are in Christ, find security in that identity, and from that security you can help them find their own worth and identity in Christ.”
When they see that we are clear on who we are, they begin feeling safe to connect with us and learn from us. Again, we’ve got to keep reminding ourselves that our true identity is discovered only in Christ, who designed us before the foundation of the world—and keep living in that true, secure identity.
3. Don’t just fill a position.
Few people truly want to deal with the realness that teens/young adults require. Unfortunately, churches can plug volunteers into roles overseeing youth without ever pausing to ask if God has gifted them with the heart or skills for it. We’ll usually just throw anyone with the will to help into the youth ministry. My suggestion is that we each fast, pray, and seek God’s face to know His assignment for each of us. Working with youth is a high calling.
By now, I’ve been teaching Bible class for over 25 years. It’s something I believe God has called me to and gifted me for. Once we are clear about what God calls us to, all the professional certification and degrees are just icing on the cake—nice but not necessary. What’s necessary is that we bring our best into what God calls us to.
“Once we are clear about what God calls us to, all the professional certification and degrees are just icing on the cake.”
4. Teach the Word.
We sow the seed and add water, but the Spirit of God does the work through the Word of God that we plant in them. Our young people need the Word of God. Period. As a teacher, I cringe when I see watered-down, oversimplified Bible lessons for young people. They can understand far more than we give them credit for!
Early on, I started teaching our high school Bible class students the same lessons I was teaching adults, and most of the time they grasped it more readily. Partially, this is because they didn’t have a ton to unlearn. They can be naturally humbler by virtue of their age and sometimes more believing, as we all should be. James 1:21b (NIV) calls us to “humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.”
Again, kids desperately need the Word of God. It will not come back void but will accomplish what it was sent out to do in our students. This means we too must stay in the Word, keep the Word in us, and keep planting it as often as we’re given the opportunity.
5. Operate in love.
To disciple kids, we must operate in love. Young people and teens especially require a level of patience and kindness that can only come from the Holy Spirit! I’ve found that the younger generations will push back and really test your authenticity. They want to know: do you really care about them? They want to see how you react to disrespect, rude comments, apathy, silence/being withdrawn, etc. Will you keep pursuing their soul for God?
Kids today are more exposed to adult dysfunction, sin, and hypocrisy than any generation in recent memory, and they tend to come with less respect for adults as a result. They are what we’ve made them. It takes patience and persistence to win their trust.
“It takes patience and persistence to win their trust.”
At the same time, we need to be reminded that love isn’t just niceness. Love isn’t just telling kids what feels good to hear. I just completed a unit about sin and salvation with our high schoolers. It was fascinating to hear their perspective on sin and judgment compared to that of their parents’ generation. For the most part, their parents’ church experience was low on grace and high on threats of hellfire and brimstone for each and every sin. In response, their parents have tended to overcorrect so that now, their kids are flippant about sin. “Hey, we all fall short, right? God knows my heart, after all. There’s not really an eternal judgment, is there? I doubt it, since God is all about grace, right?”
As such, many kids have an understanding of salvation that has been deeply warped in the opposite direction. We need to operate in love, and a big part of loving kids is telling them the truth. As James 1:20 (NIV) says, “Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.”
6. Be Aware of the Enemy’s Schemes.
Last, we must not be ignorant of the schemes of Satan. For example, I’ve seen a massive resurgence of interest in New Age spirituality among the younger generations. We as teachers/mentors/disciplers must become knowledgeable of the traps being set for our young.
Colossians 2:8 (NIV) warns us against being taken “captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” If we care about discipling young people, we will stay alert regarding the hollow and deceptive ways of thinking that will lure them away from Christ. Anyone called to disciple young people must be knowledgeable of the ins and outs of spiritual warfare.
These tips can guide a generation back to Jesus and, in fact, help keep the teacher or discipler in the narrow way as well.
