Unsuspecting youth…

Ok, so let me start off with some background information. For those of you who do not know, I am currently serving as the youth pastor at a church in Apopka, FL, a job that I take very seriously. It is no small responsibility to take charge of the spiritual, moral, and emotional growth of 4 or 5 dozen high school and middle school students. These guys and gals are very impressionable and, especially in the case of middle schoolers, tend to trust those who are in authority (they don’t tend to get that rebellious streak until about 10^th grade). So, for me, that means that more often than not, they are going to trust what my staff and I teach them.

At first glance, that’s actually a pretty cool thing. People look up to us. They want to know what we think, and often they take what information we give and the take it to heart. But a big problem in this scenario is that young minds don’t necessarily always have the capacity to discern authority. Here’s an example:

When I was in early high school, I had a teacher that claimed he wanted to help us “expand our minds.” Now to him, this meant he was introducing us to philosophy and ideas that we hadn’t considered before. The only problem was that these new philosophies and ideas contradicted some of our already held beliefs. His answer to this problem was that we should “suspend” our current beliefs to make room for these new ideas and that it would all flesh out in the end. Since he was a teacher and had authority, many of the students began to follow this teacher blindly, assuming that since he was a teacher, he knew what he was doing. It felt like a scene in Dead Poets Society, right up to the point that one of the students in our class attempted suicide.

Now, on to the reason for my post:

What is the deal with people who abuse authority, especially authority over impressionable youths? Recently, my wife and I took a group of students to a conference that our church participates in annually. Usually it’s pretty good with a very grounded and effective speaker. This year was not the norm. After much consideration, I won’t share the man’s name, though he is apparently on a national speaking tour. Here’s what happened:

At no point did the man teach on any subject that the conference was dealing with. The theme of the conference was iLife, with the key verse of John 10:10, which reads:

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

The only thing that the speaker did was promise the kids that as long as they believe (not necessarily in God, but just believe) then they will be successful in life. He then proved it by talking about what kind of car he drove and that he has his own airplane.

Seriously? Ouch. And, trust me, that’s not all. There’s way too much more to go into here.

Luckily, I have a great group of kids that each thought that the speaker was a tad bit suspect, so we were able to have a great discussion about it before the trip was over. It was a wonderful opportunity to encourage them to put 1 Thessalonians 5:21 in to practice. It reads:

“Test everything, hold on to the good.”

I am grateful that my students were able to see that something was wrong with the situation we were in, but I am infuriated with the fact that this person decided to abuse the authority that he was given over a 700 or so high school and middle school students. I guess it’s times like these that remind me of the responsibility that I, and others in my position find ourselves in.