Christian Spirituality for Teenagers - an introduction

I’ve been asked to address the question of the spirituality of young people; and I think I need to say three things before starting to discuss what it might look like practice. The first is that the word ‘spirituality’ is probably one of the most rubbery and misleading terms ever. In contemporary culture it is highly individualized – it is a way I can talk about myself as vaguely having a religious sentiment without actually committing in the usual way to a religious group. But this is absolutely not a Christian way to think about it – because we think about ‘spirituality’ as having to do with the ‘Holy Spirit’, and because we believe in the Triune God – a unity of three persons – we think necessarily of the Spiritual as having to do with God the Father and God the Son and how they act in the world. Which reminds us that a truly Christian spirituality must centre on the cross of Jesus Christ – the place where God was reconciling himself to the world. The great thing about this is that it reminds us that true spirituality is not about us doing things to make ourselves more acceptable to God, but rather about God and his gracious gift of his Son for us.

The second thing I need to say is that when it comes to spirituality, teenagers are the same as everyone else, but different from everyone else: but their sameness is more fundamental than their differences. This is important to remember because of the demographic segmentation that comes with our market economy. It divides us into smaller and smaller groups, making each group seem alien to the others so it can sell us products. Especially, it has cordoned adolescence off from the rest of us, and made us feel like teenagers are a species apart – with special needs and special interests that only specialists can understand. But spiritually speaking, teenagers are in the same state as adults: they are created in the image of God and so called to respond to God; they share like the rest of us in the Adamic crimes, and the stain of sin is on them, too; and, if they are in Christ, then the Holy Spirit dwells in them and they are fully members of Christ’s body, the church, just as much as adults are. We might recognize for practical purposes that adolescent believers have particular personal and social needs, and so form youth groups and have special ministries for them – and special ministers – these are not because we think teenagers are a different race but precisely because we think of them as being in a kind of triage situation – a point of particular need and particular openness. And this leads me to make two related points for how we develop teenagers as spiritual beings: first, that we are preparing them for lifelong spiritual engagement with the Lord of life, not simply entertaining them or diverting them for a while; and second, that we are separating them from the main congregation (in as much as we do) so that we can connect them.

So: the practices for cross-centred teenage spirituality are not in some ways different from the practices that a Christian adult ought to pursue, though they may be differently applied.

The third thing to say about them is that these practices are all responsive – they are responses to what God has done; and in fact direct us to what God has done (rather than what we do). If that focus is lost, we no longer have Christian spirituality, we simply have religion.