Dealing With Kids Who Make Bad Decisions

The most painful thing in youth ministry is watching a kid you love make bad decisions.

You invest more than just your time into these kids, you invest your life. You can’t clock out of a relationship. And it’s hard to deal with the emotions involved with kids who go on making decisions that can and will ruin their lives.

This post will be more personal than those I’ve written before. And I’m writing this with the hopes that you might be able to get some encouragement from it.

Will and the Issue of Drugs

(warning, long story ahead)

I met Will [I changed the name and details for confidentiality sake] a year and a half ago when his parents forced him to go on a retreat with our church. He seemed to be the typical punk kid with a skateboard under one arm and a too-cool-for-school attitude under the other. He wasn’t an issue on the trip, but he didn’t spend much time around me either. We got back home and I didn’t see him again save for a few Sundays at church.

A few months later we headed off to summer camp, Will included. He knew some of the kids from school, so he fit in pretty well. We had a lot of opportunities to connect during the week and he admitted to me that I was one of the few people he felt he could trust.

Some of the kids kept making jokes about him, though, and the insult “pothead” was thrown around more than once.

I usually didn’t do this, but I asked him to come aside during one of  the evening chapels and asked him if the accusations were true.

He nodded.

I asked him for more details. How long? How frequently? With whom?

The answers were short and reluctant.

I admit, I was as curious as I was concerned. He told me things that I did not expect. Different kinds of drugs I had never heard of. Certain kinds of parties similar to raves. Experimental drugs he and his friends were inventing.

He never made eye contact with me.

I began to ask him about his family. If they knew. How he was dealing with it.

Suddenly, and very unexpectedly, he began to cry. The cry turned into sob, and very soon he was weeping. I wrapped my arms around him and he buried his head into my chest. I could feel his hot tears soaking my shirt and pouring down my arms.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

I don’t remember much else of that moment, except all of a sudden, I was crying too, but I do remember telling him that God still loves him and his family still loves him and that this youth group loves him.

That was over a year ago. Since that time, he’s had good days and bad days. He’s spent some days on his knees before the Cross and some in the back of a cop car. Some days he’ll tell me everything. Others, he’d rather not say anything.

“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing.”

There have been times when I hugged him and told him how much I loved him and days where I wanted to punch some sense into him. Not to mention one or two sleepless nights, mostly right after church trips.

I know Will is not the worst-case scenario. But seeing him make bad decisions has been painful. I don’t want him to be the guy in rehab or on the side of the street asking for money. I don’t want to see that worst-case scenario.

Over this past year, I think God has been teaching me these things:

1. I am not Jesus. I knew this in my mind but my actions were still saying, “I can do it all!” The result was burnout, one that I’m still trying to recover from (though I’m on the upswing of things right now!)
2. I can’t change kids’ hearts. I need to lead them to the foot of the Cross and let the Holy Spirit do his work. Then I pray, pray, and pray some more.
3. I can be there to support them. While I can’t make them change, I can be one of their biggest fans. I can encourage them and let them cry on my shoulder. Sometimes they need nothing more from me than that.
4. Some kids won’t change. Some kids, because of their own decisions, will not allow God to transform their hearts. There will be those who “perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved” (2 Thess 2:10). Regardless of the outcome, I need to keep loving them, in hopes that through my dedication to them, God’s faithfulness will shine all the more.

What’s next?

When was the last time you called a kid and told him or her how much you cared about them? Maybe they need that bit of encouragement right now.

Maybe a youth leader in your town is dealing with a Will. Why not encourage him or her?