Disciplining Teens in Youth Ministry
The topic of this post is a heavy one. Sometimes we as Youth Ministers are required to enact discipline with our students. We hate to do it, but there come times when we simply have to for the health of the group, or even the church. But when we it, we want to make sure that we are sharing the love of Christ, even if teens are seeing only the justice portion of that love (let’s face it, we all will shoot straight for the Justice aspect when we get into trouble with someone else. We all have a hard time seeing the truth behind “This will hurt me more than it will hurt you”).
Recently in our ministry – yes the one I stepped into just this week – a problem has arisen with a student who has a bad track record with theft. Said student was actually arrested the other evening, caught in the act of stealing, and the church is now left with a decision. Should we ban this teen from the premises?
Now, I want this to encourage intelligent, gracious discussion. Here are the pros and cons of making this decision. Weigh in with your thoughts on the topic, and in the next couple of posts I put up, I will share what the church decided to go with.
Pros: banning this teen will enforce that there are consequences to his actions. It will allow congregants of the church to feel safer to leave their purses sitting for a minute. It will (hopefully) teach this teen – who knows Scripture – that said Scripture is true and that he should not be doing these things. It will protect the church from further escalation were he to remain here.
Cons: it might send a message of being unforgiving. It will send a lost student away from the only real Gospel he is hearing right now. It might send the message that we are looking down our nose at this student for making the mistakes that he has.
Like I said, weigh in with your thoughts, any pros or cons I neglected to list, and in a few posts I’ll reveal the church’s decision.
Disciplining teenagers is always difficult. I try to remember we are of the gospel of the second chance. So when I deal with disciplinary things I tend to;
1) Action must be calling teen back to living out the gospel
2) Action must always have a way of redemption
3) Action must protect other teens from following the same manner of behavior or being hurt by another teen.
So I always lean to short term probationary type dispinary action that would have to build significantly for repeated offenses and always point to redemption.
Habitual offenders need soid consequences. If they continue to offend and get off with a slap on the wrist from us, they will end up keep on offending and will get into more and more serious trouble.
One of the hardest things to do is tell a kid he cannot come to church, but at times that is necessary. Even then I still try to make it a point to stay connected with the kid, and hope to eventually restore the kid to the group.
Question: is this the first time said student was caught thieving? (You mention they have a bad track record, but you don’t give specifics.) If it is the first time of this magnitude, I would lean toward offering grace and levy some form of “punishment” less harsh than banishment.
On the other hand, if it is not the first time… then I would agree with the above poster. The most important part of the equation is drawing the student back to the cross.
Great stuff so far guys!
And to answer Uncle Pappy, it was actually the second time this teen has been caught stealing from members of the church, and after his arrest, he confessed to another incident that he was merely suspected of carrying out.
Keep ‘em coming. i’ll post the answer Tuesday or Wednesday!
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Don’t discipline anyone for playing this new game we just finished at the link below.
http://www.zoorace.com
Because, it is fun and has a definite evangelical theme to it. lol
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