It's a question we've all heard before and pondered in many of our quiet times. "Why does it seem that the church has no power to keep youth, or most people for that matter, in relationship with God?" How many of us have seen kids who have a genuine relationship with God, who are on fire with excitement and enthusiasm, seem to slip away and go back to old behavior patterns?

Some answers I've heard are: We need to uphold kids more in prayer; we work so hard to get youth to feel that high, that we never really teach them how to stay there; we haven't taught them how to make God the center of their lives.

Because God's in our lives already, the teens don't know where to begin. Discipleship is missing; we spend too much time on issues and not enough on teaching life lessons, providing enough mentoring, and following up.

Young people are making many decisions now that they don't intend to take into adulthood. I know teenagers who spend countless hours perfecting their skateboarding tricks, but they don't intend to make a living out of skateboarding. At my local high school, there's a student who dyed his hair Bozo-the-Clown red. There are other kids with blue hair. Along with hair color, there are the piercings and tattoos. For most, getting tattoos are permanent decisions that were made in a nonpermanent state. I know many students who are already regretting their piece of skin art. At least the piercings close up.

Most of these youth don't expect to take all of that look into adulthood. Think back to your own adolescence. How did you look in high school? Nothing like you do now, right? I'm sure many of you have used your looks from high school as a humorous example in your messages.

This is why the laws of the land protect minors. There's an understanding that minors are growing up and any bad decisions made in that process shouldn't have to follow them into adulthood.

So why do we expect our teens to take a decision about their faith into adulthood when so many other decisions aren't expected to follow them into adulthood?

James Fowler suggests that we all go through stages of faith development. At the age of adolescence, the stage is called Synthetic-Conventional, which basically means that faith synthesizes values and information and provides a basis for identity and outlook. It's fake-easy. It's not completely that person's faith because it's mirrored from the faith of others. Adolescence is full of mirroring, whether it's from other adults, other youth or magazines and other media images. It's also true with their faith.

In adolescence, something new happens in the learning process—contradictions and ambiguities. Not everything is the childlike black and white. This is part of our development from childhood to rational, thinking adults (insert joke here). This causes great confusion in youth because they realize parents cheat on their taxes and drive too fast (and often far worse). Even God seems to have contradictions and ambiguities. How can a good God allow evil to happen? Why didn't God heal that really sick person? We also have those questions, but we've learned coping skills to deal with them. Teens see us face unbearable ambiguous situations and yet we cope. So their faith is mirrored to ours who've made it.