Discipling Younger Men
Younger Men
I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I have written to you, children, because you know the Father. I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.1
I use the term “younger men” intentionally. These are not children. We fail to effectively serve them when we treat younger men as kids. If there is such a thing as an “age of innocence”, traditionally the age would end around 12 or 13. Whether or not there is an age of innocence, by the time they reach 6th, 7th, 8th grade those boys have become younger men.
They are men. They stand before the same God as you. They owe the same honor and obedience to that God as you.
But they are younger. They have less experience than you. They do not understand their responsibilities as men before God as fully as you do. They have not learned how to fulfill those responsibilities as you have.
I say “younger” and not simply “young” to emphasize the process of maturing as opposed to a state of immaturity. They are not just young men. They are younger men who are growing. Every younger man is different – they have gone through different experiences, show different levels of maturity, grow into maturity in different ways and at different rates, and are growing into different older men.
Let no one look down on your youthfulness.2
Here is a test to identify whether or not you see these younger men as men or children. Imagine some threat rising up against them, some harm or hardship headed their way. Where are you standing? With women and children, your natural response as a man is (or ought to be) to stand in front of them, between them and the threat. When other men are threatened, you stand beside them. You change a woman’s flat tire. You help a man change a flat, and that only if he asks you.
… but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.3
Expect much from them. Bear with their immaturity, but always expect them to live as the men they are. Respect them as men. Trust them as men. Hope for them as men whose Master is able to make them stand.4 Let them rise to your expectations.
Be patient. God took His sweet time getting you this far, and you still have quite a ways to go. God grows them, not you.
Parents
You are coming alongside the parents of these younger men, but you are not their parent. Parent’s have higher and different responsibilities towards their children than you have towards your guys.
You should model submission to your parents and encourage your guys to submit to theirs. Submitting to the authority of parents is a model of and practical working out of submission to Christ, and a command of God.
It is important that there be boundaries between you and their parents. Your guys need to trust that they can share their lives with you without every detail being reported to their parents. Their parents need to trust you to tell them when there is something they need to know in order that they may effectively serve their children. Ideally, if there is something about a younger man that needs to be shared with that man’s parents, that man himself will do so. Work with your guys to learn how to talk with their parents. If there is something that the parents need to know, and your guy is not willing to share it with them, he needs to know when you go to share it with his parents.
As you serve this younger man, you might see a very different side of their parents than most other people. Be very careful not to tell parents how to do their job. Help the guys you serve to be understanding towards their parents.
It is important to talk with the parents before beginning to mentor their son. You, and their son, need their permission. They need to understand what your role is and what they should expect from you and from the relationship. They need to know how to contact you. It will probably be helpful to check in with them occasionally. Consider asking them during these check-ins if there are areas they are working on with their son that you can join them in addressing.
There are younger men in the church who come from broken homes, from homes where the parents do not believe, or do not live as though they believe, or are otherwise “difficult”. “Honor your parents” does not have exceptions for bad parents. Lost parents are an opportunity for you and your guy to invite them to come to Christ. Unrepentant parents should be presented to pastors for guidance and, if necessary, church discipline. Difficult parents are an opportunity to learn how to obey Christ when it is not easy.
I was working with a younger man from a broken home who got into some things he shouldn’t have. I didn’t know about it until afterwards. It was a problem and needed to be addressed, but also something “common to man”5. His mom found him out. Within 2 hours, she had shaved his head and had him standing on the street corner in front of his high school holding a sign declaring his wrong. She called all of his extra-curricular teachers and tried to have him kicked out of their programs. He had “permanently lost her trust” and “irreparably destroyed their relationship.” He was kept isolated from the church, from his friends and from me for several weeks. None of this was an appropriate response. Her behavior brought separation and death, rather than restoration.
He and I finally got to talk for a few minutes when his mom (she did not attend a church) came to church and brought him. It was crucial that he be assured of God’s forgiveness and continued love. That he did not need to feel any shame in front of me. That things were going to work out for good. After that, it was important that he remember to submit to his mom even in this. In this particular situation, I didn’t even get a chance to bring up honoring his mom. He brought it up – talking about how mad he had been with her at first, and then how he had realized that she was a sinner like him and he needed to be understanding and submissive. What he most wanted to talk about was not how he had been mistreated, but rather how excited he was that his mom was at church.
parents (are they also my assignment?, differences in handling parents who are lost vs those in church, possibility of subverting the parent’s roles, examples of what is confidential and what should be shared.)
There are claims that parents are or ought to be the “primary disciplers” of their children. Where is this in the text? It’s not. Deut 6 specifically uses a different word when it says that Fathers ought to teach their children (“disciples” = “talmidim” which is from “limmud” hebrew for teach, or really goad like an ox, but deut 6 fathers shannaz or sharpen your sons.). There is little to suggest discipleship and nothing to suggest primary. I don’t even know what primary is supposed to mean here. The claim is coming from a desire to push back on consumer Christianity, where parents drop their kids off to be taught about God by the church. But the reaction goes too far and is not grounded in the Word. Parents are essential, important, responsible, obligated to teach, admonish and raise up their children. But they are not called “primary” and they are not called disciplers. And the church is not called alongside them. Whoever does not hate his father and mother cannot be my disciple.
Friends
You are their friend, but they are not your friend.
Part of the process of mentoring will require you to open up your life to your guys, and they will likely open up their lives to you. There could be things about your life that they know that few other people in your life know. In relationships with your friends (those beside you) and your mentors (those above you), the intimacy with an other that flows out of that kind of openness comes with the freedom to rely on the other. You cannot let yourself lean on these younger men. You need other people that you can lean on. These younger men need to be able to lean on you. You are their friend. But you cannot lean on them. They are not your friends.
With your friends, there are topics that you cannot speak about without being invited. You likely don’t give just any of your friends advice about how to handle their money. You likely don’t ask your friends how healthy their sexual relationship is with their wife. Your friends could invite you to talk about these things, but without that invitation or without clear and unrepentant sin, you don’t have the right to talk about those things. It is not the same with your guys. You have obligations to speak into the lives of your guys about many things that would otherwise be off-limits with friends.
When the mentoring relationship is complete, they will become your friend as you have been theirs. This transition should not pass unmentioned. Set up a pillar6, mark the event, throw a party.
Social Media
Social Media and relationships. The addictive nature of social media, texting, etc. How those lead to superficial relationships. The importance of putting your phone away.
Earning the privilege
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.7
Pastors have authority. Kings have authority. Parents have authority. Authority given by God, that flows out of responsibilities towards those over whom they are to exercise their authority. For the most part, these positions of authority are not voluntary. You do not choose your parents. You have little choice regarding the many “kings” over you. A mentoring relationship, however, is voluntary. You choose to serve them and they choose to let you serve them. To speak into their lives, to have them hear you when you speak into their lives, is a privilege to be earned, not a right granted by your position. You work to build up the power to speak into their lives, and then you spend that power by speaking into their lives. Spend that power carefully, on things that matter, at times when your words will be heard.
They will not, generally, grant you the privilege of being heard easily. The most effective ways to earn the power to speak into the lives of younger men are authenticity and openness on your part about your life, especially the hard things; respect for them, treating them as men, empowering them to exercise control; and, most importantly, time, lots of time, being present with them, “hanging out”, doing “nothing”.
The power to speak that you earn is valuable because of the time and work it takes to earn it, so spend it wisely. The power to speak that you earn expires quickly and unpredictably, so spend it. Attempting to use more power than you have earned will fail – they will not listen and they will make it harder to earn more power to speak later. Sometimes you have to choose between encouraging them to spend time in the Word or encouraging them to come to church. Confronting them about sin, especially sin they have not previously acknowledged, is very expensive.
Even earned power can only effectively be spent on things concerning which they permit you to speak. A few months ago, after a harsh breakup, he was willing to let you speak about how he relates to his girlfriends; however, that topic is off limits right now in the middle of his new relationship. Trying to talk about it now will use up a lot of power and fall on deaf ears.
Acknowledge the voluntary nature of the mentoring relationship up front. Grant them control. Remind them that you have committed to being open with them, but they continually get to choose how much they share with you and what they permit you to speak about. Respect the decisions that they make. You can give them invitations to change their decisions later, but honor their choice today.
To the extent that they let you in, to the extent that they submit to you, listen to you, let you “watch over their souls”, to that extent you will give an account to God for the way you served them, for how well you built them up into maturity in Christ.
Acceptance, Affirmation, Affection
This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!8
Parents model both the love and lordship of God; however, a mentor has not been given the authority necessary to model lordship by “lording it over”9 the younger men they serve. To faithfully imitate Christ, and therefore live a life worthy of imitation, you must model the love of God. It happens that what younger men most desire and will most respond to is this kind of love.
They need to be accepted. “This is my beloved Son.” They need to know that you have chosen them. They need to know that you accept them, even though they are broken and sinful. They need to know that your acceptance of them is predicated upon your choice, not their character or actions. They need to see these things in you, so that they can understand them about God.
They need to be shown affection. “My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” They need to know you love them and care about them, even though they are broken sinners. They need to know that they cannot lose your love. You need to discover what makes them feel loved: a handshake, a hug, words, time, a gift. They need to see this kind of love in you so that they can understand the love of God.
They need to be affirmed. “With whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him.” Build them up. Tell them you are proud of them. Tell them specifically what you have seen in their lives that makes you proud of them. Praise them publicly, call out those around you to respect them. Affirmations are not free, you still have to earn the right to speak them (and affection and acceptance) into their lives, but they reach far deeper than instruction or correction. They need to feel your affirmations of them if they are to have any hope of comprehending the significance of God considering us “a rich and glorious inheritance”10, or the value of “Well done, My good and faithful servant.”11
Do not say anything that you do not mean. Your failure to be authentic will be immediately recognized by those you serve. We crave authenticity and everything this world offers is fake. Join the world in being fake and you will join Geico ads – muted and then skipped on their way to that next funny cat video.
Social Pressure
If you are serving younger men effectively, they will grow to trust you, to desire your acceptance, affirmation and affection, to want your friendship and your time. You will have a relationship with them. You will be a part of their lives. This gives you leverage over them. You can use your relationship to put pressure on them to change their behavior. Using this leverage can take the form of the seemingly innocent, “I care about you and I’m worried that if you continue doing x, you are going to get hurt.” On the other extreme it looks like, “Until you get x straightened out, I can’t meet with you anymore.”
Any application of social pressure, any attempt to leverage your relationship to change the behavior of the younger men you serve, no matter how gentle or well-intentioned, is wrong. It is an attempt to drive change based upon fear. God never treats us like that. He never places conditions on His continued relationship with us. His love for us is never on the table to be bargained with. He does not use fear of anything other than Himself to motivate us.
Using social pressure to accomplish change gives me the power and the glory. I decide what behavior needs to change, and when and how to change it. I am the reason for the change. I have not fixed the brokenness in their soul that drove the original behavior. I have not taught them more of God. I have not brought them closer to God. If my application of social pressure fails, I have broken our relationship. If it succeeds, I have made this younger man dependent upon me – he looks like he’s standing, but I’m holding him up. And now when I fail (and I will), I have the pleasure of watching this man stumble as well.
To his own Master, he stands or falls; and he will stand, for God is able to make him stand.12
When the temptation to apply social pressure arises, put God back in the center. You ought not be worried about the future of this younger man, because God has him and his future. If bad things happen, God will work them out for our good and His glory. Imitate Christ – affirm His and your continuing relationship with him while inviting him to grow and waiting patiently for God to work.
You can use the access that your relationship gives you to speak into their lives, to give them a swift kick in the pants if that is what they need. However, these conversations should be founded in hope, not fear, and designed to push them to God, not to or away from you.