Young men often tell me they don’t like reading the Bible. In fact, I’ve noticed many guys just don’t like to read at all. While there are many cultural critiques to be pulled and analyzed, the fact remains many young men have not gotten into The Good Book.
Simultaneously, the same ones have told me what they believe about God and Jesus and faith. Often their theological systems are as complex as an adult who has read through the Scripture. Our main source for the practice of our faith comes from the Bible, but even before young men start getting into reading later in their teen to 20-something years, there is a mediation of matters of faith through a variety of means.
The Sunday School (including Confirmation Classes), a structure established to help educate children of factory workers using the Bible, has been a major method for the passing on of religious stories, skills and interpretation since the mid- to late-18th century. An engaging teacher can inspire youth while teaching the doctrines of the church. Unfortunately, young men often are turned off by the educational format having learned to resist any semblance of homework, having been sitting in a class most of the week. As states push for higher test scores, young men are visibly burning out and just don’t desire to learn any more on a Sunday morning.
The worship service itself is a major teaching tool, as adults singing songs surrounded by the symbols of the faith, essentially educate young people through actual worship experience. Many dressed up boys will sit with their families; but often in the teen years, a young man will try to push out from the family. As parents more and more defer to the choices of their children, young men often are not present in worship. Even when there, a checked-out glare denotes the resignation that they have to be there rather than want to be there…not a best circumstance if we are to pass the faith onto the next generation.
That brings us to the family unit itself. Though mixed families have become more common and mainstreamed (at least as an image in culture) for young men, strong male role models of faith are incredibly important. This really is the core of where faith starts in a young boy. In Scripture, God often is referred to as “Our Father.” God as Father is a hard concept if you have not had a father figure. The earthly father is the first representative of God to his children. As Christ came and lived among us, a father lives among his children, and their concepts of God are often founded in positive (and negative) experiences with their dad.
I remember vividly my own dad having breakfast with the other men of our church. Once a year, they invited their sons to come and eat with them. In a small space, we shared elbow room with our dads, ate a hearty breakfast, listened and laughed as we saw the humanity and good nature of those who share a common faith together. We came to know Christian community better, and we heard them talk about matters of faith with importance. It was like being in heaven.
Every guy needs moments when he experiences an earthly father (or father figure) in a similar way. When a young man begins to sit in worship, attend Sunday School classes and memorize “God so loved the world that He gave his only Son” for them, they already have an understanding of what that love actually means. There is a deeper understanding that cannot be expressed with mere words. Those experiences color the faith of great upcoming men. Our challenge as ministers is to help fathers and other men in our church live as good mediators, showing the young men how amazing God’s love spilling over can truly be.
