Discipling teens needs the humility of John the Baptist

Discipling teens can be complicated, socially exhausting, and emotionally risky. When you step into the lives of teens—even responsible ones who are committed to Christ—you’re stepping into the roaring rapids. You never quite know what the next turn will bring, and it’s never calm for long. It’s exciting... also a bit scary. 

Effective disciple-makers of teens come in all shapes and sizes; I know 70-year-old women and rugged construction workers who do it as well as any 20-year-old hipster. But whatever your profile, it takes a quirky sense of adventure to truly enjoy this kind of disciple-making—not, mind you, the stereotypical ‘cool’ pseudo-adult who only knows how to relate on the level of Pepsi and marshmallows. Discipling teens requires a kind of hard-core spirituality that takes mature faith—and die-hard love—to develop.

Enter John the Baptist.

For a while I had his compelling words “I must decrease” stenciled on my kitchen wall (John 3:30). Not a super sentimental quip, but it did me good. This is the kind of self-denying humility that is necessary for a rich and effective ministry of discipling teens. Here are four specific ways John’s example can sharpen our focus and clarify our mission as we engage with the teens we love for the sake of the gospel.

Follow Christ yourself, hard

John the Baptist, a disciple-maker, was a kind of disciple himself. He saw Christ as superior in every way, and Christ’s ministry as surpassing his own (John 1:26-27). He was the son of a priest, a lucrative career for a first century Jew. Yet he sacrificed it all—the status, the wealth, the respect, the security—to announce Jesus as Messiah (John 1:23).

Teens need adults in their lives who are following Jesus with the youthful faith and zeal and all-in gusto that affirms the worth and power of the one they have left everything to follow. And one way they can see us following him first-hand is in our love for them, being willing to lay aside the perks and pursuits of adult life in order to know them personally and serve them practically. Teens have a pretty honest sense of how hard they can be to handle; when we keep coming back for more, for the sake of Christ, they might just listen to what we say about him. 

Be willing to step out of the rat race

John the Baptist lived a lifestyle that was slightly out of sync with the culture, yet that made him easy to find, and reliable (Matt 3:4-5). Nothing gets more in the way of discipling teens than the subtle but powerful undercurrents of the adult mainstream. We’re supposed to be making money, busy-busy-busy, keeping the house camera-ready, and spending lots of quality time swapping photos with our friends on the latest devices. But all excuses aside, these activities don’t make us more ‘relevant’ to teens: they simply distract us from them. And unlike toddlers, teens have enough dignity to not bother with adults who clearly have better things to do. They’re not going to expose the inner struggles of their souls to someone who can’t even make eye contact.

Teens need adults in their lives who aren’t enslaved to the overconsumption of media and the neck-breaking pace of life. They need adults who stop to really listen to them, who are willing to cancel things and take the time to help sort out the spontaneous emotional and relational emergencies that come up in the lives of teens almost every day. Discipling teens requires constant availability, willing flexibility, and happily undivided attention. Tons of it.

Prepare to lose followers

John the Baptist was the ultimate case of someone working himself out of a job. Several of John’s disciples (probably teens themselves) left John to follow Jesus, no doubt because they were so inspired by John’s own devotion to Jesus (John 1:35-37). If you’ve discipled teens for long enough you know that this is truly one of the challenges. Unlike the neighbour or the friend at work or the cousin you might be discipling, the teens in your life are moving on. They’re a couple years from leaving home, going to college, getting married. If they follow Christ, you’re most likely going to lose them… and that’s the point. 

You want the teens you disciple to become independently reliant on him, willing to go wherever he leads them, no matter how dangerous or remote. You want them to find other godly heralds of Christ to pursue—friends, mentors, even future spouses. It will feel at moments like they’ve lost interest in you, like you have been discarded for someone more interesting or relevant. But if they are leaving you to follow Christ, you’ve done your job. Take comfort: you’re decreasing as Christ increases. 

Try to swallow the true definition of greatness

John the Baptist was a tempestuous, fire-breathing character whose dynamic profile would attract any adventure-hungry teen. He was all in, willing to wear weird clothes and eat odd food, but in the end his commitment would lead him into the dark boredom of a jail cell, waiting for his head to be cut off at the whim of a belly-dancing teenager whose mother didn’t fancy being told what to do. Where was the power? Where was the judgement? Where was the King he had proclaimed? John sent his disciples to Jesus again, this time to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood. His answer, in essence, was “suffering now, power later” (Matt 11:2-11). 

To disciple a teen is, more often than not, to forfeit medals of honour and financial rewards. As we disciple the teens in our lives, we must be satisfied that the exhausting blast of energy we shared will likely end in... silence. It’s a huge investment with an eternal reward, but for now we need to get comfortable with the silent applause of Christ himself, who said:

… among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Matt 11:11)