The parent (who was encouraged by our leader to talk to me directly, and I hope they will) had some valid points. Two kids making out in the youth room during youth group would concern me as a parent as well, and so I addressed the issue with the two students. And yes, when I hear a student throwing out a cuss word every other sentence, I'll ask him or her to tone it down. But as I was thinking about the parent's complaint, a thought came to my mind:
If we're doing our job as youth workers, then we'll always have some teenagers in our church that some folks might consider "disruptive."
For a while, our team has been working really hard at making our youth ministry a place where people who might not know Jesus feel welcome. This school year, we've seen a lot more guests than we have in previous years. In addition, there's a small subset of our group who make it clear every week that they disagree with me about this whole Jesus thing, not to mention most of the things I teach about sex and marriage. But still they come and listen (even if they do wander out of the room about halfway through my message). I recognize that such an environment will create some very uncomfortable situations from time to time. But if you're dealing with some "disruptive" teenagers in your church, that might be a sign that things are headed in the right direction. (Never mind the fact that we all know "church kids" who have a tendency to get into more trouble than the kid who came for the first time with his girlfriend last week who wanted to know where he could smoke a cigarette.)
In a way, I was a little grateful to hear of this parent's complaint.
Now, that doesn't mean that I'm going to start using "Number of kids making out on Sunday morning" as an indicator of growth anytime soon. I'm also not saying that I think we as a youth ministry have arrived or that we have it all figured out. If you followed me around for a week, you'd know that was far from the truth. But if there is ever a day when all of the teenagers who attend our church do exactly as their told, sit nicely in rows through a whole sermon, and don't cuss or smoke (or go with girls who do), then I'll know I'm not doing my job as a youth pastor.
Of course, there will be people--probably some parents--who might be uncomfortable with some "questionable" language and behavior in your youth group. And now that I'm a parent, I get that. However, part of our job as ministry leaders is to help people understand why we want teenagers who are far from God in our churches and our youth ministries, and what exactly that might look like. It's also our job to cast a vision for a church that's safe for all teenagers--a church that might be a bit messy at times. It doesn't mean that anything goes or that we overlook behaviors that really shouldn't be going on because they are unsafe or keep others from being able to experience God in a meaningful way. After all, one way that we love teenagers is to set healthy boundaries for them. But if our churches and youth ministries are places where teenagers who may not know Jesus feel at home, then our churches and youth ministries may not be as neat and clean as we might be tempted to want them to be.
