Four Key Practices for Christian Adulthood
The Big Idea: The best practices for nurturing liberty, authority, identity, and mystery are discussion, exploration, holiness, and prayer.
Now that we’ve seen what adulthood is, what Christian adulthood is, and how the Bible talks about it, we can ask, “How do we transform our youth ministries, parenting strategies, and schools to invite youth into Christian adulthood?”
At CAI, we’ve identified four key methods that help catalyze youth’s transitions into adulthood, and that help form their desires for an adulthood that is placed in Jesus’ hands. These methods are discussion, exploration, holiness, and prayer. Together, they give youth the abilities and desires they need to begin entering robust Christian adulthood.
The Four Practices
PRACTICE #1
Discussion - Two or more people seeking a single, unknown truth together.
It’s not enough to offer good ideas to youth. We must also train them to think for themselves. By engaging in regular, free discussions with youth, we show their minds respect, we exercise their minds for truth-finding, and we teach them that they are capable of more than they previously believed. This practice liberates them from childish thinking, it dignifies them, it teaches them who they are, and it guides them into direct encounters with their own confusion, and with the mysteries of God’s world.
Too often, youth are led to feel that their questions don’t matter, or, worse, that their questions are dangerous. Instead, we should join them in their questioning, and equip them to become people who seek God’s truth.
The Big Idea: We should practice free, student-led discussions in search of truth.
PRACTICE #2
Exploration - Finding God’s glory and truth everywhere.
Youth often experience Christian groups as places of censorship, places that always seem on defense, that always seem afraid. Instead, to help them form new adult identities, and to help them begin grappling with the biggest, hardest things in life, we should curate experiences of incredible discovery. Christian spaces should be spaces where new things are discovered.
We should help them enter nature and culture courageously, keeping their eyes peeled for the glory of God in art, film, music, literature, and their neighbors. We should show them that the Christian faith isn’t a small club defending itself from the dangers of the bigger world, but that it’s bigger than the whole cosmos. Nothing is too big or hard for our God, and if we hold fast to him, we can go anywhere to discover his goodness, truth, and beauty.
The Big Idea: We should curate experiences of goodness, truth, and beauty that our youth wouldn’t have elsewhere.
PRACTICE #3
Holiness - Rejecting mere behavioral Christianity to know and imitate Jesus.
When Christianity is just a lifestyle, a way of behaving, it is liable to be thrown out with other elements of their childhood lifestyles as youth become adults. Unless they become real disciples of the living Jesus, their Christianity will be brittle and fragile.
Yet all too often, we offer youth a version of Christianity that’s focused on their behavior, on whether they are acting like “good Christian kids.” This approach forgets the radical call and grace of Jesus. It forgets that sometimes the “bad kids” are precisely the ones who are calling out to God for forgiveness in their hidden rooms, while sometimes the “good kids” are simply skilled at navigating social situations and imitating the adults around them.
Youth need to hear us renouncing hypocrisy and mere behavioral Christianity. But more importantly, they need to know Jesus, and they need to see that he made a way that they can really follow. Our ministry to youth should be packed with the stories of Jesus, until they see that he is sufficient for everything they could ever face, and until they long to live like he does.
The Big Idea: We should call out the danger of merely living a Christian lifestyle and actively help youth adopt the living Jesus as their daily role model.
PRACTICE #4
Prayer - Offering yourself to God as you are and receiving God as he is.
Prayer is one of the only things that cannot be taken away from us by anyone but ourselves. It’s the most powerful activity in the world. It’s the precondition for repentance, gratitude, and true Christian fellowship. When we pray, we are being protected, enlightened, healed, and transformed, whether we realize it or not.
For these reasons, as youth prepare to leave us and enter the challenges of adulthood, there is nothing more good and useful that we could give them than prayerfulness. We should make it our number one priority. Prayer could liberate them from sin, empower them for works of God, show them who they are in the eyes of their Father, and lead them into the mysteries of faith. We should use all our energy to liberate them from prayerlessness and lead them into a life of prayer.
The Big Idea: We should do whatever it takes to help our youth overcome prayerlessness and strive to pray without ceasing.
By prioritizing these practices, we’ll see youth grow in liberty, authority, identity, and mystery.
These practices will transform the way we do small groups, give sermons, run retreats, and more. They are guiding principles for reform at a time when youth ministry desperately needs it.
CAI is committed to training and equipping churches to understand and apply these methods. You can explore curriculum, training, and more at www.nsgu.org, the home for Never Stop Growing Up Youth Ministry.
