The struggles that a teenager faces during this transition is not a college-cultural problem, but rather a discipleship issue. Though it is true that many older teens wander through this next stage of life as they get caught up in a worldly lifestyle, but that goes back to the point that they are not prepared to stand firmly in their faith in that new setting.
So, how do you plan to help prepare your seniors for these challenges? Since holding their hand and becoming a helicopter-parent for the next 4+ years is out of the question (not to mention, spiritually irresponsible), the only real solution is to equip them with faith ownership. Now, faith ownership is a term you are probably familiar with, but I want to make sure you understand the deep of what is necessary.
Think about the responsibility that comes with ownership. When describing this point to high school seniors in my book, Lost in Transition, I use the illustration of driving the old family car as a teenager verses a vehicle that I picked out and paid for. The difference is ownership, and with ownership comes a commitment to protect, nurture, and grow. When I was a teenager, I was giving a car that my Mom had driven for eight years. After the newness of driving wore off, I stopped taking car of the car and trashed it, inside and out. Now, I take good care of my car because I have a sense of ownership over it. The same is true with our faith in Christ. We often hear the term “borrowed faith” when describing a teenager without ownership. He comes to church because he is made to and would not be proactive to maturing spiritually without accountability. This is the more obvious example of a lack of ownership. The other side to this coin is the active teenager that has enough ownership to grow in her own in high school. She is a leader and an example for a maturing Christian teenager. This student needs to be taught what I call Ownership 2.0, which is how to continue to grow and mature without the four influences that I described previously.
The Bible has a lot to say about faith ownership. In 1 Corinthians 13:11, Paul writes: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” As the writer of Hebrews puts it, “Let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity” (6:1). As a teenager gets older, we need to help them grow in maturity so that they develop ownership in their faith.
The first step to faith ownership is developing a sense of understanding. I have never been good at math and would always memorize the steps to solving an equation long enough to pass the test. That is often how believers approach their faith; they hear a Bible story or learn a verse long enough to know it for a Bible study but then forget it when it comes to applying it to life. Someone with ownership is mature enough to hear God’s Word, understand how the passage is useful for living, and put in the effort to become a doer of God’s Word (James 1:22).
Jesus spoke on this when he told the parable of the seeds. Most of the seeds fell on rocky, shallow, and thorny ground and did not grow. The other seed feel on good soul where it produced a crop up to one hundred times what was sown. When explaining the illustration, Jesus said, “But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it.” Understanding God’s Word produces ownership as one learns how to live in Christ and make an impact to the Kingdom of God. I firmly believe that equipping a student with faith ownership before graduation is the only way to ensure that they make a healthy transition to life after high school.