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Parenting the Parentless: Ministry to Emotionally Abandoned Students

I was introduced to Jimmy by one of the girls in our youth ministry— she told Jimmy it might be a good idea for him to talk with me. A junior at the local high school, Jimmy got good grades, was involved in school leadership, and just secured a starting spot as the quarterback on the varsity football team. And although Jimmy was a good-looking, relationally engaging kid, he was a little nervous starting our conversation.

"I need some help" Jimmy began. "My dad kicked me out of the house two days ago, and I’ve been staying with a friend." Jimmy knew it was a temporary thing and that his dad was going to let him back home, but I could tell he was in agony over his home situation.

Soon I learned that Jimmy’s mother had walked out on the marriage and family when Jimmy was younger, leaving him and his sister with his father. Jimmy’s father immediately remarried a woman who had very little time for Jimmy. As the years went on, Jimmy’s dad became less interested in Jimmy and more influenced by his wife’s dislike for the teenager in their home.

I also learned that Jimmy’s way of getting noticed was through overachievement. While he gained recognition from his school, his accomplishments were labeled a con job by his dad. Jimmy was at the end of his rope. This kid was feeling the pain of emotional abandonment. I knew that Jimmy needed to experience the love of the one Father we always depend on, but I recall wondering how that would ever happen, given the scars and woundedness that Jimmy carried:

"God, how can I lead him to you—a loving, everpresent, never-abandoning, gracious, healing, compassionate Father—when his concept of a father and mother is so twisted?"

You probably have students like Jimmy in your youth ministry. High national divorce rates, economic instability that pulls parents away from their kids and into physical and emotional absenteeism, and parental incompetence—along with family dysfunction—guarantee that we’ll have no shortage of abandoned students to minister to.

In 1 Corinthians 9:22, Paul reminds us that we become all things to all men. So before I saw Jimmy embrace Christ, I had to become what he needed...a parent.

Practical Theology
Effective youth ministry is built around the principle that youth workers are representatives of Christ—i.e., incarnational ministry. In Ephesians 5:1, Paul tells us that we are to imitate Christ.

We become the visible and tangible expression of Christ as his ambassadors. Paul uses a similar phrase in 1 Corinthians 4:14-16. He reminds the believers in Corinth that they may have many teachers in Christ but not many spiritual fathers in Christ. He "became [their] father through the gospel" (1 Corinthians 4:15). He then exhorts them to be imitators of him.

The progression is simple: We imitate Christ by parenting students, who imitate us. This is a scary thought if you’ve never had a good parenting model yourself. It’s also scary if you’re not—or never have been—a parent. What should you do if you don’t know how to parent hurting students?

1. Redefine Ministry Success
James 1:27 defines successful ministry by the way we attend to widows and orphans—and the emotionally abandoned students of this age are the orphans to which James refers! Our commitment to these orphaned students will require all of our attention for many years. Because when God gives children to parents, the parents are charged to nurture their children until they’re adults.

Caring for orphaned students or acting as surrogate parents to hurting students is no simple task. We may not see the fruit of our labors for a long time. Yet so often our youth ministries perpetuate abandonment because we look for—or are forced to achieve—quick, measurable results. As a result, we pay minimal attention to abandoned, parentless students. Paul knows it’s a long and hard process that requires more than merely delivering the gospel: "Having thus a fond affection for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us" (1 Thessalonians 3:8).

2. Establish Trust
Students who’ve been abandoned have a difficult time trusting. Their lives have been riddled with false promises and dashed hopes. When we encounter these students, we’re moved by compassion to minister to them.

But often our compassion for students influences us to promise things that we can’t deliver; if trust is going to be established, we have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Trust takes time and initiative. And youth workers, not the students, must take the initiative to keep contact. Make calls, initiate meetings, send e-mails and letters, page students when you’re thinking about or praying for them—all without promising to do any of that.

3. Build Family around Students
Youth groups can be the surrogate families for students with abandonment issues—and it’s here that the labors of building loving communities yield fruit.

Jimmy got pulled right into our youth group. He felt genuine, real love from our community. And this was so foreign to his experience that he wanted more of it. He also got a chance to see that I was all for him. My motives were no longer suspicious to this kid whose first response was conditioned to distrust and question. He saw my genuine love played out in the relationships with staff and other students. He also saw his peers trust in those loving encounters.

Furthermore, I believe some of the greatest untapped resources for ministry to hurting teens in the church are empty-nest adults. These late-40s to early-50s adults raised children—and still have a lot of energy, wisdom, and time to give teens. And teens get the chance to experience healthy multigenerational relationships.

I had a conversation recently with some friends whose children grew up in my youth ministry. This couple raised their children, both of whom were out of college and in their careers. When their children left for school, this couple moved to a different town and got involved in another church—and this church needed volunteer youth workers. This couple looked fearfully at the prospect of working with teenagers again, but prayerfully decided that they would try it. Needless to say, God has taken their paternal instincts and used them to minister to abandoned, parentless kids. They are impacting students for Christ and loving every minute of it.

4. Be Available
Parentless students need adults to rely on. These teens might test your genuineness by being overbearing and sometimes demanding, but the way they figure it, if you’re going to walk out on them, they might as well find out early. So you need to make time each week for face-to-face contact with certain students.

5. Maintain Strong Boundaries
Boundaries eliminate possible confusion in abandoned students’ minds as to what’s acceptable and what’s not. Boundaries also help students feel some sense of normalcy—and give you control over your life.

For example, don’t give students your pager number or cell phone number. If you make yourself too accessible, you teach them to rely on you, not God. And if you fail to return their pages or calls, you’ll reinforce their abandonment fears. If you tell them they can call anytime, they’ll take that literally, expecting that you’re waiting by the phone to answer.

In fact, give students times when they can’t call. If there’s a time you can’t talk with hurting students, explain to them that you can’t talk at that moment—then give them times when you will talk with them. The security in knowing that you’ll make the time for them will still speak volumes, because nobody ever makes time for them in the first place.

6. Don’t Compromise Authority at the Expense of Rapport
I’ve heard many youth workers say they don’t want to confront students too strongly because they’re afraid the exchange will hinder students from confiding in them—that their authority will compromise their rapport with students.

This is false and destructive to students, especially parentless students. They’re desperate for security—and they don’t know where the lines are. They need the assurance that comes with the authority of parents. So don’t look the other way when they do something or say something inappropriate. When youth workers are perceived by students as peers, those youth workers will never be perceived as authoritative role models. Besides, if you’re just like their friends, they won’t trust that you can offer them anything they aren’t already getting from their insufficient network.

As a loving father, I want my children to know and do what’s right. If I establish a loving, authoritative relationship with them, I keep communication doors open because of the security I provide by my presence in their lives.

Jimmy was talking with some students who were complaining about their "strict" curfew rules. Jimmy was asked about his curfew: "I don’t have one," he said. The students told him how lucky he was and how great that would be. But Jimmy interrupted them, saying that he wasn’t the lucky one—he said he wished his dad cared enough to make him come in at night. Through his tears Jimmy said, "My dad never knows where I am or what I do...and I wish he did."

Effective youth ministry demands that we model. If we compromise the authority that God gives us in the students’ lives, we abandon the security they need.

7. Establish a Mindset of Ownership
If God has entrusted abandoned students to you, you have the opportunity to be spiritual (and surrogate) parents—and you need to look at them as your children.

What needs to happen is a mindset of ownership:

• Affirm their value. Your students are so valuable to God that they cost the life of his son, Jesus. While we’re not worthy of that sacrifice, we certainly are not worthless. So treat your students with respect and honor.
  
  
• Don’t be afraid to verbalize your love and care. You must tell hurting students they are loved. Let them know when they’re doing good things—and lovingly tell them when they’re not. There is healing and power in truthful, spoken words (Proverbs 16:24).
  
  
• Recognize their potential. Look for anything and everything positive about your abandoned students. Help them cultivate their talents, gifts, and abilities. Give them realistic dreams of what they can accomplish (i.e., you can see them coaching little league some day or being effective in business or working well with little children).

  But don’t just recognize their outward abilities—note their inner qualities as well. Tell them when they’re relationally engaging, compassionate, patient, thoughtful, et cetera.
  
  

• Listen to them. Be intense about hearing what they are saying. Ask clarifying questions. Always check the emotions of the conversation as well as the content of the conversation. Ask them what they’re feeling about the things they’re saying. This will help you connect with and understand them. And it’ll also affirm to students that you understand them.
  
  
• Don’t be afraid to use meaningful touch. This is obscenely missing from emotionally abandoned students’ lives. But we live in a litigation-happy society that’s impaired our ability to be Christ’s hands to students. We need to combat this by building healthy, intimate, parenting relationships for students reinforced by appropriate, parent-reflective touch. In other words, as the relationship deepens, show the appropriate affection that loving parents would show.
  
  
• Share dreams for their spiritual lives. Show them how God rescued abandoned teens. Give them a vision of Joseph and Daniel, two teens in Scripture who were abandoned and then prospered because they were plugged into God. Let them know that God desires intimate relationships with them, and then be the conduit through which he can accomplish that in their lives. Help them to see that in Christ, "Old things pass away and all thing become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

After about a year of building a relationship with Jimmy and modeling a loving father for him, I finally had the opportunity of leading him to Christ. He finished his senior year strong and went off to college, healed and new. Now Jimmy lives in another state, a college graduate in his career.

One night not long ago he called to say thanks for being "the only dad he’d known." As Jimmy continued to share his heart, I realized that God had done a great thing in his life—and I had the privilege of being used on that journey.

Steve Gerali is chair of the department of youth ministry and adolescent studies at Judson College in Elgin, Illinois. He holds a clinical counseling degree with a specialty in adolescent development and disorders and has more than 20 years of youth ministry experience.