TEENS AND MONEY

She was driving well past the speed limit. She got pulled over. She got a stiff fine. And this young teenager’s response? “I’m so angry at my parents! They expect me to pay for this ticket. It’s just not fair!”
I’m sure she had better things to spend the money on. Clothes, cell phone accessories, itunes for her ipod. All the essentials for a teenager. Summer is coming to end and several kids have gotten their first jobs and are about to taste the part of reality that I’m still learning myself. Juggling three or four responsibilities and carrying a job all at the same time. With school, sports, time for friends and so on, how in the world will they have time to work? But without work, how in the heck will they get all the finer things that their friends have? For most teens, that’s the only thing having a job is good for: to feed their raving appetite to buy more stuff.
THE THINGS TEENAGERS WILL DO FOR $

I’ve seen teens give hundreds of dollars to the church and others spend thousands of dollars on stuff that’s equally valued to belly-button lint. Either way, spending the money is what made them feel good. It’s what all people do, not just teenagers, to find happiness. (I find it quite comical when people say money can’t buy you happiness. When I bought my daughter the new Dora The Explorer movie, I got pretty happy when she screamed “DORA!!!!!” and then hugged and kissed me.) Sure, the joy of earning and spending the money from the first job is great. But too many parents hand off the financial responsibilities to their kids without helping them understand the depth of the danger they could face if they’re not careful. “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, in their eagerness to get rich, have wandered away from the faith and caused themselves a lot of pain.”-1 Tim. 6:10.
In this day and age, parents have no choice but to make their kids get a job due to the hurting economy. But if we make our kids get jobs, we should also have restrictions on what they should be spending it on. Granted it’s their hard earned money, but they’re young teenagers that have an obsession with spending. I was talking to a young teenage girl today who is working two jobs, and she told me that she’s only responsible to buy her new clothes after her parent buy her her school clothes, and to pay for gas. I asked her why she has to have two jobs to do that and she told me she LOVES to buy new clothes. With today’s adults defined as the Credit Card generation, and dept being higher then ever, we should see the spending trends of our kids and make sure they understand stewardship and wisdom. They should learn from our mistakes. But we can’t expect them to learn by watching. Because all they’re seeing is the crazy spending habits that is behind the reason some of our kids have to get jobs.

THE 23: WHO CARES?

They’re not aloud to be outside of a business for more then five minutes. They don’t feel welcomed at the local high-risk youth hangout spot. They’ve either been thrown out of their houses or haven’t been home in several days with out the parents even noticing. So where do they hang out? They call it The 23.

At the 23-hour parking lot on any given day you will find anywhere between 10-20 kids hanging out. Well, maybe not all kids. Their ages range from 14-24. These are the outcast of our community. The druggies, potheads, losers, scum, dirty people of our society that most people don’t really care about. The police don’t mind that they hang out at the 23-hour parking lot. As long as they don’t hang around the community and scare the ones who make the wonderful town of Cambridge civilized. It makes sense now that when someone new to the community hangs out at The 23 they assume he’s an undercover cop. They’re not use to seeing police near there so they think it’s a little too fishy.
You’ll find beer cans, cigarette butts, candy wrappers and a mass variety of garbage on the ground. You’ll even find a tore-up mattress on the floor with a dingy pillow laying underneath a tree where kids will be resting.
What should be done about this issue? Should they be chased away and dispersed? Some think so. Should they be arrested to teach them a lesson about right and wrong choices? Some would argue that. Should they be ignored? This community has mastered that.
"There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." Deuteronomy 15:11

CHRISTIAN YOUTH OBLIVIOUS TO REALITY

After hearing of a father who sat down with his son to discuss the content of one of his son’s favorite songs, Greenday’s “Longview”, not in a reprimanding manner but rather as an opportunity to have a father-son conversation, it taught me a parenting lesson I will never forget and will utilize: know what is inevitably going to reach my children’s eyes and ears, and see the opportunities for life lessons.

More then 75% of kids that attend youth group during their high school years will walk away from the church when they reach college. Studies have shown that a key reason for this is due to lack of “heavy” material that has prepared them for the real world. A second reason is they believe the church is irrelevant. Another reason for the departure from the church is a new taste of another reality.

Kids are being raised with Christian barriers around them so thick they don’t have a clue on what’s happening apart from their Christian communities. At youth group, I had a sweet, innocent girl ask me what Cocaine was! It was cute, but really weird. One of today’s hottest songs is “I Kissed a Girl”, by Katy Perry. She was raised by parents who are both Pastors. Here is what she said in a recent article in Entertainment Weekly.
"After leaving the nest and seeing some of the world and seeing all kinds of people, my brain has a little bit of a question mark about what I believe. I’m still searching."
It took her to move out of her Christian house in order see what's really happening in the world. And that’s a standard for kids that leave the house and decide to put their faith in God on the back burner.

A recent study by a research group in Britain recommends parents to watch some of the steamy nighttime dramas that are aimed towards their teens in-order to have an opportunity for must-needed conversation with their kids. “This provides a springboard for parents to communicate their own values as well as helping teens to think through and challenge their own existing beliefs about sex, sexual health, relationships and the opposite sex," writes Anita Naik, the author of the report, issued by Britain’s Department for Children, Schools and Families. Utilizing what will, in due time, be introduced to the kids by giving them a practical biblical lesson from a source that can potentially catch them off guard due to culture shock.

Philippians 4:8 tells us to think about whatever is true, honorable, fair, pure, acceptable, commendable, excellent, and praise-worthy. This is a standard verse used by Christian parents to help guide them through parenting, and I believe it does need to be practiced. But does this mean we need to raise our kids to never notice what is happening around them? Is it a mistake to take what is dominant in youth culture and see what truths can be found? In the Book of Acts, “Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “"Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.””
What are we preparing our kids for?