Intergen Jobs

I co-taught an 8 hour Deep Learning Track at the Group National Youth Ministry Conference this past weekend. The title of our track was “Preparing Your Teenagers for Life After Youth Group”. I shared about our College Transition Project and Chuck Bomar shared about his experience working with college-aged people.

I learned a lot from Chuck. Like me, Chuck is a big fan of intergenerational relationships for teenagers. But he helped me see even another good reason why we should help our kids build relationships with adults.

Kids are constantly identifying and differentiating themselves. What I mean by that is they are constantly evaluating who they are similar to and who they are different from. That’s a good and healthy part of the developmental process.

Let’s point kids toward specific models with whom we want them to identify. How about if we as youth workers become a catalyst for our students building relationships with godly adults in the jobs our students want to pursue? What if we help kids who want to be attorneys spend a few hours with a godly attorney? Or work out a way for the kid who wants to be a business leader spend a half-day with a sharp business person in our church? That way they have a live, visual aid for how they can integrate their faith with their jobs. They have a tangible, specific model with whom they can identify.

Too often students shelve their faith in college as they are making career choices. Through the networks we have in our church, let’s expose them to adult models who live out their faith every day in their vocations.

©2009 Fuller Youth Institute