Intensive Learning Labs (cont’d)

Beyond Me: Accompanying Adolescents on Their Spiritual Journey

It has become clear to me over the past twenty-five years of teaching in a Christian college setting that most of our church going adolescents, even those who are vitally connected with the life of the church, seem to have been offered little sustained encouragement to think of spiritual formation as a necessary part of their journey in Christ.

Adolescents, like any humans, hunger for a genuine experience of God and a true knowledge of themselves. The desire may be adolescent, even childish at times, but it is no less real. Young people require both guidance and space from those of us who have been called to care for them.

The goal of Christian spiritual formation is to cooperate with the work that the Holy Spirit of God seeks to accomplish in those of us who have been received into the family of God, through the saving power of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.

So, as the apostle Paul tells us at the end of Galatians 5, “if we do indeed live by the Spirit of God then we also ought to keep in step with the Spirit of God”. For Christian adolescents, the spiritual journey is centrally about ‘keeping in step’ with the work that the Holy Spirit of God is seeking to do in their lives. We will explore during our time together a variety of ways that allows the Holy Spirit to shape their patterns of living in ways that eventually form their character to be more like the person of Jesus Christ.

Led by...

Cal Macfarlane