What is Love? (Baby don't hurt me.)

So, I've been working on notes for a totally different topic, but I want to write something of a follow-up to a post shared by another blogger. My friend Angela posted about cyberbullying, particularly in a context of middle school. In discussing how we adults (but particularly parents) can respond to these situations, she says, “First, we need to let our middle schooler know they are loved. We need to remind them of their self-worth; their worth in the eyes of Jesus.” You can read the whole post here.

I really want to expand on this point a bit. Parents and mentors often think they are doing this and doing it well. The problem may not be that you're not communicating that your child is loved, but whether or not they're able to hear it.

Too often, I have heard parallel stories from students and parents about the same events, but with very different perceptions of those events. A parent will be celebrating an amazing time they had with their kid, and the kid walked away from the same even feeling unloved. Sometimes it's practically the opposite. A student comes in gushing about this amazing thing his parents did for him, but when I ask the parents about it, they barely remember what the kid is talking about.

Let's face, even with the large number of middle school students facing some sort of bullying situation (cyber- or otherwise), the reality is that most middle schoolers struggle with feeling loved and having an awareness of their worth. If a key aspect of mitigating this somewhat is to communicate love and value to them regularly, but they may be unable to hear or accept it, what do we do?

I'd like to toss out Dr. Gary Chapman's concept of the “Five Love Languages” as a tool that might help. I'm not claiming that his ideas are amazing science, nor that he's pulled them straight from the Bible. What I would say is that his general concept seems to be a helpful tool for a lot of people to understand these gaps in any of their relationships—when someone believes they are communicating love, but the other person doesn't perceive it.

The short version of Chapman's idea is that people give and receive love in different ways, and while all the major ways he identifies are valuable to all people, most people operate out of a primary love language, and understanding a person's love language will allow you to communicate love to them in a way they hear and understand. The five he delineates are gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, and physical touch.

The idea is that you should be able to pay attention to what your child does respond to. They may not feel that you love them if you “only” say it in words, but they might react positively to you baking cookies for them, or to you putting away your phone and computer for some one-on-one time with them. You may have another child who you do things for every day, but the complain that their parents don't tell them that they love them!

I only recently figured out (I think?) that my dad is a “gifts” guy. I frankly have never really perceived much in the way of love coming from my dad, but I've recently noticed that he picks out small things that I need and picks them up on occasion when he's out—a calendar, some storage containers, etc. (If you're worried about whether your kid is a “gifts” kid, and you don't have money, don't worry. . . the language of gifts doesn't necessarily mean spending lots of money.) Basically, as an adult, I'm figuring out that it may well be that my dad has tried to express love to me, but we were effectively speaking different languages.

Make sure you're speaking the same language as your kid when your trying to communicate love and affirmation. This goes for parents and mentors. For those of us who are not parents, but mentor other people's kids, this is one of the reasons we need to spend time with the kids—so that we can make sure we're affirming them in their own language. This is another reason small group leaders and parents should regularly share their wisdom with each other—so we can help each other out in the process of loving and affirming these kids.

Unintentional Lessons About Discipleship From a Student

Anyone who works with children or teens knows that it often seems like you learn more from them than they seem to learn from you.

I had just such an encounter a week ago.

I was there to see a soccer game that one of my middle school discipleship guys was playing in. Unfortunately, as is often the case in these scenarios, I couldn't actually interact with the guy I was there to see since he was off with his team. Also unfortunately, the previous game had gotten interrupted by rain, so they were resuming that game, causing a delay in the game I was there to see. I wasn't quite sure what to do at this point.

At this point, the older brother steps in. I actually have a pretty good relationship with the older brother, so it was good to be able to spend a little time with him. However, he decided it was time for us to throw around the football he had with him.

Let me tell you something about footballs and me. We don't get along. Pretty much as soon as it involves anything sports-related or if it just calls for physical coordination, I'm out. I know close to nothing about any sports, and football is particularly perplexing.

Normally if someone proposes football (or anything sports-related), I attempt to politely decline, even if some people interpret it as snorting derisively. In this case, I knew this guy pretty well, so I decided to give it a shot. I let him know he'd have to teach me. He knows me well enough that he just grinned and said, “I know.”

So this high school student proceeds to go through some very basic stuff with me—here's how you should stand, here's how you move your arm, here's when you let go of the ball, here's how you aim, here's how you can be prepared to catch the ball. And it worked.

IT WORKED. I was pretty consistent at catching the ball and at throwing it where I was aiming. Understand, I never had a gym teacher do this. Gym teachers always seemed to assume everyone had the basics, so I never really learned about sports in PE, because I never had the prerequisite knowledge to understand what was happening. This student taught me more in about twenty minutes than years of PE classes.

What does this have to do with discipleship?

1. I was willing to participate because of the relationship I had with the teacher.

If a stranger had come up and asked about throwing around a football, I would have declined. As it was, the invitation came from someone who knew me and cared about me. That made learning stuff that I wasn't particularly excited about much more palatable.

When we're attempting to teach people what it is to be a Christ-follower, we need to function out of relationship. If you're in student ministry, you know that students have any number of motivations for showing up at church. They may simply not care what we have to say if we're just the weird adult in the room. If we get to know them and show that we care about them, they'll have a reason to listen.

2. The guy who was teaching me knew my starting point, and began with the basics.

Because he already knew me, he knew my thoughts and experiences regarding sports. He didn't make fun, and he knew he had to start by showing me very basic skills. We weren't attempting to play football. He was just helping me learn to throw and to catch.

One of the reasons we must know the people we're attempting to disciple is that we need to know their starting point. For someone with no church background, there may be a ton of misconceptions to clear up. Frankly, for someone with tons of church background, there may be a ton of misconceptions to clear up! If someone has the basic teachings down, we need to be ready to guide them in serving and reaching others. If they feel like they're sitting around and absorbing the same information they've already heard a hundred times, they're going to check out.

3. This student (and his little sister) encouraged me and celebrated small victories.

He probably could have made fun of my lack of knowledge, skill, and coordination. He didn't.

This one's pretty straight-forward. We need to be intentional about encouraging and celebrating small victories. Encourage the kid who remembers that Acts is in the New Testament. Celebrate in some way with the kid who usually offers sarcastic comments but manages to hold his tongue.

So, it all begins in a context of relationship. Based on that relationship, you instruct, guide, and model according to that person's particular starting point. Always encourage, and celebrate small victories. These are a few things I learned while waiting for a soccer game to start.