Leading Teenage Humans OT22 Breakout
Breakout script from OT22: leading teenage humans
In our time together, we’re going to be talking about the idea of leading teenage humans. So, if you’re in this room, we’re assuming that you are working with 6th through 8th graders (which we’d call middle school) or 9th through 12th graders (which we’d call high school). We’re going to be talking through some ideas that are core to who we are at Orange & the Phase Project we started years ago.
If you have just realized that you went to the wrong breakout or you’re already familiar with Orange & Phase, I have a 3-minute policy where if you leave in the next 3 minutes, there are no hard feelings or judgments. But, if you leave in 4 minutes…you’ll hurt my feelings, so…plan accordingly. Hah.
Okay, now that it’s just us real Christians left who care about this stuff, i will say before i get started that you can get all my notes & these slides at brettryantalley.com/ot22. I literally manuscript when I prepare, so you can literally go back & read through things & look at the slides again if that’s helpful & you can just listen instead of trying to write as fast as I talk, because I’m telling you…that’ll hurt your hand.
So, the reality about being human is that, especially in the first 18 years of your life, you are just traveling from phase to phase. I’m 38. Other than a few more aches & pains, I’m not sure I can tell you much of a difference between my phase as a 38-year-old & my phase as a 32-year-old. But the difference between a 12-year-old & an 18 year old…yeah…I think we’re all pretty familiar with that jump & how much changes.
Normally, when people talk about phases, it’s negative, right? We say it when our kids won’t stop biting other kids, or they lock themselves in their room. “It’s just a phase!”
As a parent myself, there are definitely some phases that you hope move by as quickly as possible. But when we talk about phases at Orange, we put a different spin on it. A phase is a timeframe in kids’ lives when we can leverage distinctive opportunities to influence their future.
So phases, while they do have their challenges, shouldn’t be wished away. Instead, they are unique windows of time for us to lean into to help a kid or teenager understand something new & significant about God.
And for us in this room that are working with MS & HS students, it’s not only that we want to leverage these distinct years to influence their future - which I think is true - but we also want to influence them to grow in their faith.
To better understand this God who loves them - this God who invites them into the story - this God who has more for their life than they can understand…we want to influence them to develop a resilient, everyday faith of their own.
But, for us to do that well, we have to understand what is happening in those phases.
I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying this, but I think what happens in too many kids & student ministries each week is that what gets talked about & how it gets talked about…has more to do with how the leader feels when they walk out of the room than what is most helpful for the faith development of their students.
I’ve been there. I’ve had weeks where I walk out feeling like I preached the word, I did what I was supposed to do & now it’s the Spirit’s job to do the rest. And while I agree that the Holy Spirit can work through just about anything, I don’t think I gave the Holy Spirit much to work with those weeks.
So, when it comes to leading teenage humans, for us to be as helpful as possible when it comes to them developing a resilient, everyday faith of their own…we have to understand where they are & what is happening in that phase. And we have to learn to lead in the tension that exists in the midst of all of that.
So, in our time together we’re going to introduce some important things for us to know about the MS & the HS phases & how that might change what we do in our ministries.
As we get rolling, let’s hit 3 things that are important for us to remember if we’re going to Lead Teenage Humans well.
It’s just a phase, so teach like love matters.
Especially in these phases, if we want every kid to walk away one day convinced that God loves them, we have to teach like love matters.
You’ve probably realized by now that we make Love a pretty big issue at Orange. It’s because we don’t want kids & teenagers to grow up & forget that Christianity at its core is about following someone, having a relationship with someone. Jesus actually stepped on the planet to illustrate that point. And we think what Jesus said & did gave us a key insight into how we should teach kids at every phase.
When the Pharisees asked Jesus in Matthew 22 which the law was greatest in all the commandments, Jesus responded by quoting Moses, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart & with all your soul & with all your mind. This is the first & greatest commandment.”
But he doesn’t stop there. He adds, “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”
Then goes even further to solidify how important this idea really is. He explained to these Old Testament scholars, “All the law and prophets hang on these 2 commandments.”
So Jesus breaks it down into 3 categories. Loving God, Loving Others & Loving Life.
That’s why so much of what we do at Orange focuses on those 3 things. We’re trying to help kids & teenagers…
Love God & have an everyday faith.
Love Others & have stronger relationships
Love Life & make wiser choices.
If your students leave your church one day & those 3 things are true in their life…
…they love God in a way that causes them to love others & love life…
…then you’ve succeeded! So, what if everything you teach always comes back to these 3 issues - and your strategy from cradle to adulthood is to help kids & teenagers love God.
I know that it can feel more complex than that. There’s a tension here to lead within for sure. I’m not trying to flippantly simplify it…sometimes I can even think “but what about” when I hear things like this…but I’m sure that’s what the Pharisees were thinking when Jesus responded to them the way that He did.
So, in order for us to help our teenagers love God, love others & love life, we’ve got to turn the volume up on Love louder than anything else & we need to remember who we’re talking to, which leads us to our 2nd thing…
2. It’s just a phase, so play to your audience
If you want teenagers at every phase to learn how to relate(?) to God, we have to play to our audience.
Some of you might disagree with me here, but I think the most important question to ask yourself before you get in front of teenagers to talk about faith is not…what is true? What does the Bible say? What do I think they need to hear?
It’s not that those aren’t questions to ask, but the most important question is “what is most helpful to their faith development?” What are the most helpful things for me to say for them to Love God, love others & love life?
In the teenage phases, they learn in different ways at different times. So, understanding how they are wired at each phase gives us a unique opportunity to be HELPFUL to them at that phase. It gives us a new opportunity to understand something new about God or to understand a timeless truth from a different perspective they didn’t have 3 years ago. But to do that well, we have to be intentional about knowing our audience so that they’ll actually hear what we say & that it’s helpful for them.
So, my son is 9. I’ve been coaching his baseball team since they were about 4 years old. I’m sure you can imagine how different practices look right now than they did 4 years ago. If I would have been trying to teach them how to correctly line up as the cut-off man, or nuances of how you drop back to chase down a pop fly over your head…I bet most of those boys would be done with baseball.
Would I have been teaching them things that are true? Would I have been teaching them important aspects of the game? Yea, I would have. But I wouldn’t have been teaching them what is most helpful as 4 & 5 year olds. And what I’ll teach them at 14 is gonna look different than what I’m teaching them as 9 year olds.
Kids at every phase have been made in the image of God with the ability to know God. But kids at every phase are changing physically, relationally, socially, spiritually and a lot of other things that end in -ally. If that’s true, we have to understand that the way a kid relates to & understands God changes at every phase too. Your job is not to redefine God at every phase, but to help teenagers rediscover God in a new way at each phase.
Remember how we just talked about the 3 categories of love: Love God, Love Others & Love Life? Each of the three relationships Jesus highlighted in Matthew 22 has a different level of relevance to the stages of a child’s development. Picture the concepts of wonder, discovery and passion as three separate dials. We talk about them as dials because they often need to be turned up or down…they need to be shifted depending on which phase a kid or teenager is in.
Wonder
What if children grew up amazed with the wonder of God and how much they’re loved? What if they understood God is big enough to handle whatever they will face in life?
Discovery
What if children were provoked to pursue a lifestyle of discovery, where their identity is determined by a personal relationship with Jesus and they are guided by the Holy Spirt?
Passion
What if teenagers developed a sense of passion that mobilized them to do what Jesus did on earth? What if they understood they are designed to participate personally in God’s story & redemptive plan to every generation?
To be most helpful, those dials get turned up at different times based on the phase & development of the child.
Wonder is the most natural dial to turn during the formative years where we teach young children about God as a present, loving Creator of all.
During the elementary years, we add the discover dial help them see how God’s truths & wisdom should be the compass for their decision-making. We also begin tuning in the passion dial, encouraging older elementary-age kids to serve and challenging them to make others a priority.
When kids move into the teenage years, we need to turn up the passion dial. It is critical for teenagers to personalize what they learn, but they need consistent opportunities to do ministry so they can understand how to be the church. That our faith isn’t just about knowing something, but doing something with what we know. Middle and high school students feel significant when we give them something significant to do.
Maybe you’ve heard some of this before or maybe you’ve understood it & this is just giving you some language to define it. But when we lead teenage humans, we have to turn the volume up on Love as loud as we can & we have to focus on understanding the phase of our audience so that we can be as helpful as possible for them to develop that resilient, everyday faith of their own.
Before we move on to the 3rd thing to remember, I want to dive a little deeper into understanding the MS & HS phases because I think that could be worth our time.
Middle school kids think like engineers. Engineers solve problems by connecting concepts so they work together. MS students personalize abstract concepts by connecting ideas.
Remember, they think like engineers. Like their physical bodies, there is a ‘growth spurt’ in the brain of a middle schooler. The brain overproduces neurons & synapses similar to the growing brain of a toddler. This accounts for their new, but unstable ability to think abstractly, understand multiple perspectives & think critically about themselves & others. It also means instructions need to be simple & clear if you hope to be heard.
Like an engineer, they learn best when they personalize an idea by connecting pieces of information. That’s why puzzles, patterns & codes can be helpful in this phase.
So, what is your role in this phase? It’s to affirm their personal journey to prove a relational commitment. I know affirm feels like a scary word for some of us in the room, but we’re not saying that our role in this phase is to tell them whatever they want to hear.
As many of you have experienced, middle schoolers often challenge authority & begin to personalize what they believe. In this phase, things often shift from black & white to grey. Life’s answers are no longer the same for every kid, so they need to be personalized.
3 questions they’re likely asking are…
Who do I like?
Who likes me?
Who Am I?
When we help them navigate those questions, we help them gain stability in the most inconsistent phase there is and we prove our relational commitment in the process.
During this phase, we’re provoking discovery so they will trust God’s character & experience God’s family...but how we do that is shifting a little. They’re often starting to ask questions they’ve never asked before which helps them understand on different levels how God’s story helps redeem their story.
3 ideas to help middle schoolers continue to develop a faith of their own would be…
Connect the dots. Help them connect the dots from the things they learned when they were younger about God & life help them to what they’re learning & experiencing now.
Expect a crisis. And just because it doesn’t FEEL like a crisis to you, doesn’t mean it’s not one to them. Yes, help them have perspective, but also help them develop the skills to navigate crisis in healthy ways & how to bring God into each one they face, no matter who series it might be.
Be consistent. MS can be the most predictable phase, so be consistent. No matter how much they test you, be consistent.
Ultimately, what we want them to understand in this phase is…
They can love God because God will never stop loving them.
They can follow Jesus because Jesus knows them better than they know themselves.
They can live out God’s story so others can know who Jesus is.
High schoolers kids think like philosophers. Philosophers seek to understand what is unseen & what cannot be measured. High schoolers want to discover meaning & learn best by processing out loud.
A high schooler loses approximately 1% of the grey matter of their brain every year through a process called “pruning”. Much of their brain matter is literally being replaced...so the next time you wonder if your high schooler has lost their mind...the literal answer is yes...they’re losing & rebuilding it daily.
Pruning allows the brain to prioritize information to become flexible & efficient. With this new efficiency comes an increase in analytical thinking. But, the risk-taking system is developing at a faster rate than the part of the brain that regulates behavior. So, risk & personal experience still govern behavior. Like a philosopher, they learn best through open debate, multiple perspectives & applied reasoning. That’s why self-expression & community are essential for learning this phase.
So, what is your role in the high school phase? It’s to mobilize their potential to leverage our relational influence to help them develop a vision of their future.
As you can imagine, life begins to get a little more complicated in High School...and so do their questions. They’re refining their unique abilities & sense of purpose. Their questions affect the way they pursue community, live out a personal ethic & contribute to a greater mission.
Those 4 questions are…
What do I belong?
Why should I believe?
How can I matter?
What will I do?
When we help them navigate where they belong, we help them value community.
When they challenge limits by asking why should I believe, giving them space to explore doubt & ask questions helps them clarify values. Doubt is not the enemy of faith...only unprocessed doubts. So when your high schoolers start pushing back & questioning their faith (or often more accurately your faith)...don’t give them pat answers. Maybe don’t even give them answers at all, but ask them what they think & encourage them to dive into it deeper for themselves.
When we help them navigate how they can matter, they learn they can make a difference & refine their skills.
When we help them dream about what they can do, we can help them develop a vision for their life, their influence & their gifts.
What about a high schooler’s relationship with God? During this phase, we’re trying to fuel passion so they will keep pursuing authentic faith & discover a personal mission. We want to help them understand that God’s story empowers their story.
3 ideas to help them develop a mobile & resilient faith to move with them to whatever is next are to…
Give an application. Help them better understand the spiritual by helping them grasp the practical ways in which it.
Ask a question. Something begins shifting in this phase where you are often more helpful as a question asker than an answer give. Guiding them to discover their own answers often leads to longer-term change than telling them an answer.
Make it experiential. High schoolers will often never feel important until you give them something important to do. Give them opportunities.
Ultimately, what we want them to understand in this phase is…
They’re created to pursue a relationship with their Creator.
They trust what Jesus did to transform who they need to become.
They exist to demonstrate God’s love to those around them.
We are cooking with peanut oil now. Are you all still with me? The good news is that most of this is talked about in the Just a Phase book…so if you’re like “this is amazing & i need more” - then i have good news for you. If you’re like, this is okay i think but this guy keeps moving too fast…i’m sorry. Just remember you can get my notes later :)
So, let’s jump into the 3rd thing we need to remember when leading teenage humans…it’s just a phase so…
3. Recycle what matters most.
If you want every kid to remember what you want them to know, you need to recycle what matters most. (hey, that kind of rhymes).
Let’s do some quick math. Think of a student in your ministry. Not one who is never there & not one who is always there. Think of your average student. Statistically, an average student attends your church less than 50% of the time. That means they might spend about 25 hours in your church this year.
Of those 25 hours, at least 30% will be spent…
Getting into the room
Saying hi to friends
Playing games
Listening to bad student pastor jokes
Saying bye to friends
I bet you can add a few more things to that list that AREN’T intently listening to every word that is said from the front of the room or by the teacher. So, that means they could experience less than 15-20 hours of teaching or small group interaction in a given year. Statistically, your students are likely to spend more time on their phones in one week than they will spend in your church in a year.
So, here’s the question…
If you have that much time to connect with ____ this year…what are you going to teach them?
If you only get 15-20 hours in a year to tell a student everything they need to know about God, Jesus, faith, forgiveness, grace, love, life, and eternity….what’s the plan
How are you going to influence the spiritual direction of your average teenager when you only have a few minutes every other week?
Well, we’d encourage you to rethink your strategy to make the most of the limited time you will have at every phase. With that in mind, another way to ask that question is how can you be more strategic & relational in how you teach what is most important?
We think there are 3 critical questions for you & your ministry team to think through if you want your teenagers to remember what you teach them.
What is one thing you want a kid to grow up & never forget?
What other core insights do you want them to understand related to that one thing?
What is the plan to recycle those insights so teenagers will remember them?
All of those questions mean you have difficult choices to make when it comes your messages. You have to choose what to say & what not to say at every phase. You have to develop the skill of prioritizing what is most relevant at which phases.
When you recycle what matters most, it simply means you decide what stories & principles are the most important to highlight at each phase & then design a content calendar that effectively recycles that content.
Think about this…
It’s not really your job to teach everything that’s in the Bible to every teenager in every phase. It’s your job to teach the most important things in the phase where they matter most.
Maybe you disagree with that, and that’s okay with me. But when you take into account the time limits we mention above, it’s not possible or practical to teach the entire Bible to your teenagers. I think it’s okay if you lament that, but it’s also important to grasp.
Without getting too deep in the weeds, we at orange design our curriculum around a few things. 1 is those 3 vital relationships we’ve already talked about. Another are what we call our 9 core inisights…
DESIGN of God’s Creation - What I see around me reveals a Creator who cares about me.
IDENTITY based on God’s Image - I am created in the image of God and have unique potential and worth.
CONNECTION because of God’s Love - I live in pursuit of an infinite God who desires an eternal relationship with me.
FAITH in God’s Son - I believe in Jesus and will continue to trust Him even when life doesn’t make sense.
TRANSFORMATION by the power of God’s Spirit - God’s Spirit is transforming my unique and imperfect life into the character of Jesus.
TRUTH according to God’s Message - What Jesus said and did impacts how I should respond to God’s Word in my everyday life.
RESTORATION through participating in God’s Story - I am designed to participate in God’s story to restore a broken and hurting world.
COMPASSION that reflects God’s Character - My faith in Christ is revealed by my compassion and care for others.
COMMUNITY in the context of God’s Family - I choose to live in the complexities of family and community because God values them.
And then specifically in XP3 MS & HS, we add in what we call our 6 key responses.
Developing an Authentic Faith
Making Wise Choices
Recognizing and honoring God’s Ultimate Authority
Practicing Sexual Integrity
Experiencing Healthy Relationships with family and friends
Serving Others in their home, community, and world
So, recycle what matters most. This doesn’t have to be your list, I’m just sharing our list. These are the things that we’re going to recycle over & over again during the MS & HS years because this is what we want them to walk out of our doors understanding.
And if you are going to recycle what’s most important, you need to think about content as a “scope and cycle.”
Scope: A comprehensive plan that prioritizes what you teach
Cycle: Your plan to recycle and reinforce what you teach so it’s effective
When you think in terms of cyclical learning, you recognize core truths will take on fresh meaning with every new phase. Your scope prioritizes what you will teach and your cycle strategically reinforces those principles again and again, in a variety of creative ways.
A “scope and cycle” helps you maximize the limited time you have with the average kid.
Again, if your list is different, that’s okay. If you’re not using Orange curriculum, of course that’s okay, but it might be helpful sit down & try to develop these things for your faith community.
There are a few things you should anticipate if you are really focused on teaching kids what matters most at every phase.
Unless you explain your strategy, there may be adults . . .
who wonder why you are leaving something out,
feel like you already covered this topic several months ago,
or want you to teach something more often than you already are.
Just remember, you shouldn’t prioritize your content based on how adults feel. You need to prioritize based on how kids learn.
What if a Kindergarten teacher got tired of teaching the alphabet and was ready for a little Shakespeare?
What if a dad was tired of throwing a plastic baseball to his toddler, so he got a real one instead?
Sure, it can seem monotonous teaching something similar year after year,
but it’s the way kids learn. They learn through creative repetition.
(Think about how many times a kid will watch the same movie, or replay the same song.)
That doesn’t mean you talk about it in the exact same way. Which to be honest, is one of the reasons i used XP3 in my minsitry before I ever worked for Orange. I needed help doing this. I needed the additional voices to help me talk about more than just what I was passionate about & could speak outside of my own bias & experience. I needed the structure & promps & reminders of a curriculum to help make sure that I was giving my students a balance diet that was phase appropriate & helpful to where they were.
I just couldn’t do all of those things on my own AND everything else I needed to do in ministry. Sorry, i promise this isn’t a pitch for orange curriculum. Like i said, your core insights & key responses that you strategically recycle might be different…but they have to be intentional.
YOU NEED A STRATEGY for your CONTENT - NOT JUST A CURRICULUM
That’s why every leader has to think about more than just a curriculum.
Every leader needs a strategy for their message.
Okay, so to wrap up.
To lead teenage humans into a resilient, everyday faith of their own, we have to…
Turn up the volume on love.
Play to our audience & understand their Phase
Recycle what matters most
Blog Post Title Two
It all begins with an idea.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
Blog Post Title Three
It all begins with an idea.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
Blog Post Title Four
It all begins with an idea.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.