What a time to be alive! We live in the best place in human history. We have more at our fingertips than any generation before us. Technology, finances, health, leisure, peace in the world (on a large scale), connectivity, social progress, global travel, and so much more. If you want to know about anything, you can find an answer in a matter of seconds. If you want to go somewhere in the world, it’s most likely available to you. The world is pretty amazing!
But does all of that come at a cost?
When everything is possible, the expectation becomes that you should achieve everything.
As Youth Pastors, we look at our students and see a generation with unprecedented opportunity. But if we listen closely on Wednesday nights or Sunday mornings, we hear the crushing weight of the paradox of opportunity. Because teenagers today have the world at their fingertips, there’s pressure to maximize every single hand they are dealt.
They are living under a canopy of relentless expectations, and it is coming from every part of their lives:
- Academic (Parents & Teachers): It is no longer enough to just graduate or get into a good college. Students feel they need a flawless GPA, a dozen AP classes, and a resume full of leadership roles just to clear the baseline.
- Athletic (Coaches & Sports): Sports seem to have gone year-round and hyper-competitive. The pressure to perform, secure scholarships, or just stay on the varsity roster leaves zero room for a sub-par performance, let alone, failure.
- Social (Social Media & Friends): Social media creates a 24/7 digital stage. Students are constantly curating their identities, measuring their worth in likes and follows, and comparing their behind-the-screen realities to everyone else’s on-screen highlight reels.
- Spiritual (Church & Pastors): If we are being completely honest, sometimes the church is the heaviest room they walk into. Well-meaning sermons on “living out your purpose,” “being a bold witness at school,” and “standing strong against culture” can inadvertently sound like another performance checklist. They love Jesus, but they are terrified of failing Him and failing us.
The truth our students wish we understood is that their stress isn’t a lack of resilience; it is the weight of lofty expectations. They are drowning in a sea of what could be, terrified that if they fail at any one thing, whether in the classroom, on the field, or in the youth room, the future they’ve been promised will vanish.
So, what do we do with this? Do we stop calling them to “live for Jesus” or to be “more missional” at their schools? I don’t think so. In a world where anything is possible, we need to remind them that failure is not only possible, but it’s probable. At some point, they won’t be able to hold it all together, and that’s ok. Regardless of where it happens, failure isn’t the end, and it definitely doesn’t define them.
The math they are doing says that their worth is equal to their output. But we have something that is so much better than that. We have GRACE.
The next time a stressed-out teenager walks into your youth room, look them in the eye and let them know, “The pressure is off. You don’t have to achieve everything because Jesus already did. Now, let’s go change the world, not to earn His love, but because we are already completely covered by it.”
Kyle Wood
Chief Operating Officer
Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash