For many young people, the greatest hurt they experience comes from the closest relationships they have–family. Relationships between parents and teenagers can be complicated and hard, with or without issues like abuse or alcoholism. The pain students feel as they navigate challenging home lives isn’t always visible, leaving many to suffer in silence. How can we minister to students when their home life is challenging? What constitutes a challenging home life? This workshop explores the profound impact of these environments and offers practical, gospel-centered ways to create a culture of vulnerability and build trusting relationships.
Join us for a panel-style workshop, Ministering to Students With Challenging Home Lives, at the Rooted Conference in Dallas, October 24-26. We asked panelists to share some thoughts in response to the following question:
How does knowing about your students’ challenging home lives help you love and disciple them better?
Connie Leung Nelson, College Ministry Leader in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
When students have challenging home lives, it affects them on multiple levels. If home is not a place where a student has stability and security, this will impact his or her emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. Home life can be difficult for various reasons—sometimes a parent is not physically present (maybe he or she is serving in the military or working overseas). Other times there are unmet needs despite parents who are physically present. Though issues at home can affect our students deeply, these troubles often remain buried beneath a slew of other teen issues that also demand attention. As youth ministry leaders, we cannot assume that things are “normal” at home for every student.
But there are significant, much-needed ways we can minister to students who struggle at home. Care begins by getting to know them well enough to become aware of the difficulties in their lives.
Isaiah Marshall, Veteran Youth Minister and Rooted Staff in Nashville, TN
I believe that for someone serving students, it is vital to know if kids have a difficult home life. In order for us to effectively minister to the whole person, we have to understand what is going on with the student.
While serving as a youth pastor, I tried to be intentional about connection and care. We know that students desire belonging, a place to be known and seen. Connecting with students allows us to understand what is going on in their lives. If a young person feels a sense of connection with you, you can begin to earn his or her trust. This leads to vulnerability. Connecting with young people places us in a position to best serve and care for them.
In God’s economy, he connects those who are resources or have resources to those who need resources. As co-laborers in God’s harvest, we need the Holy Spirit to connect with young people and care for them well. We can’t love them well or disciple them to walk with Jesus apart from relationship. We know that the gospel is the answer to their difficulty. When we know what students are dealing with, God reveals to us how the gospel speaks to their difficult situation.
Liz Edrington, Associate Director of Care at McLean Presbyterian Church in McLean, VA
One of the most beautiful parts of the Christian faith is the incarnation. The God who is outside of time and space meets his people in their context. He enters into the human story. He takes on a human body to reveal his love in specific, embodied ways. In Jesus, we are both known and loved.
We have the opportunity to know and love our students in specific, embodied ways (within healthy boundaries, of course). We don’t merely pronounce the good news over them abstractly. Just as Jesus builds relationships with his disciples, we build relationships with our students—and that includes knowing where they come from. Just as the Word spoke grace and truth in particular ways to particular contexts, we get to offer the same.
I think of the kindness with which my Young Life leaders treated me in high school. They must have known that I didn’t necessarily experience the kindness of God in my home. Through the gospel, they were able to offer specific hope for healing and peace that my soul desperately longed for.
Our home lives deeply impact how we perceive the world, ourselves, and the Lord—whether we’re aware of that or not. In getting to know our students’ difficulties, we can help them to do the holy work of living in the Light—of calling broken things broken, of acknowledging sin and our need for help, and of praying for the Lord’s redemption of seemingly-impossible things. As Tim Keller wrote in The Meaning of Marriage, “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
Anna Meade Harris, Veteran Teacher and Rooted Staff in Birmingham, AL
In one sense, every home has its challenges. So every student will experience some degree of brokenness in connection with their family. Teenagers are in an awkward spot: they still adore, admire, and need their parents, but they are beginning to see their moms and dads as adult individuals who struggle with flaws, hang-ups, and sin. To the extent that a youth leader can acknowledge the genuine suffering in a teenager’s home while also modeling lament, grace, and forgiveness, that leader will help that student reconcile their complicated feelings for their families with the perfect love of their heavenly Father. This is a sacred task, to help a young person see his or her family clearly and love their family anyway.
