The Bitter Sweet Problem

Although I haven't been involved in youth ministry for an extremely long time, there is still one thing that consistently comes up and is becoming to frustrate me more and more. Time and time again when doing a bible study or a talk or anything with some sort of spiritual emphasis, a question will be thrown out there. A question asked to see if the youth are picking up what you are throwing down. The question will often be sound something like this "So, how do you think we can apply what has been talked about in your life?" Maybe it looks like that, maybe the question is phrased a different way, but the person leading the study or doing the talk will say something along those lines to see if the youth are grasping the idea that is being discussed. The person who asks this question seems to almost enjoy punishment, because without a doubt the next few words that come out of the youth's mouths will frustrate and sometimes leave the leader feeling crushed. "Read your Bible", "Pray" and "Go to Church". There you are, the classic Sunday School answers that go right beside "God" and "Jesus". The very words that crush me every time I think I have said something of value. These answers generally come from the students who have been gone to church their entire life and have grown up in a christian house hold. These are the students that have their personal relationship with Christ and you are trying to help them live a life that is fully devoted to Christ.

The frustration comes because these students, who are generally Christian's, are generally the most frustrating to work with. There are ones who don't have a Christian background but they are the ones who are asking the questions but also trying to find the answers. They are not comfortable with where they are in life and are trying to figure it out. On the other hand, there is a usually a group of youth that are comfortable with where they are and don't want to be moved from their state of content, this is the frustrating group. What's frustrating is that they are right and they know it. Reading your Bible, praying and going to church are going to generally help with spiritual things. Everything within me wants to tell them they are wrong because you know full well that they are not getting the point, they are just saying it because it's right. And sometimes it doesn't even matter what the answer is, or whether they have even thought about it, they figure they don't have to think anymore cause they have figured out how to stay content. A question I always find myself wanting to ask these youth when those phrases make their inevitable appearance is "when was the last time you actually read your Bible then" or "when was the last time you actually prayed?" Pray is an answer that is tossed out there for a lot of questions but when it comes to a time when you actually want someone to pray, everyone in the room is pretty quick to not make eye contact and try and look invisible. These are not problems that are in just one specific group, I have been involved in a few groups and have experienced this in all of them.

So how do I help move these students away from their comfortable lives of content? How do you get them to actually live the very applications that they consistently say they should be living. Apparently I enjoy the pain and frustration of it, because this is one of the things that drives me to continue working with them, trying to help transform my life and theirs. It is in fact the bitter sweet problem to have. How do I help bring the Word of God alive to them. Another reason why I care so much about this, is because I used to be one of the youth 6 or so years ago. I used to be content in my faith and not really care to move out of that state. It has only been within the last few years that I really started to understand why we do these things like reading our Bible, praying and going to church. It has only been recently that verses such as Jeremiah 31:33 or Colossians 1:27 (shocking I use those two verses, eh?) have revolutionized my world. So my question: How do I do ministry because off this? On one hand it is great to see youth coming up from the church and being solid in their faith, but on the other hand too often I see the same kids staying content in it.