Feels Like Teen Spirit

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Other youth ministers caution against the tendency to boil Scripture down to a series of updated commandments about not listening to pop music or not hanging out with friends who swear. Gregg Morris, an Episcopal youth worker, remembers being an adolescent in an evangelical congregation. The stricter teachings kept him acting Christian outwardly, but God seemed like more of a "celestial bean counter." If God becomes just another parent to rebel against, says Morris, then the 13-year-old's spiritual journey may end before it even begins. Morris' search for a more inclusive Christian curriculum for adolescents led him eight years ago to become a trainer for Rite 13, a program modeled on bar and bat mitzvahs as well as Native American vision quests and African rites of passage. The program began in the early 1990s at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Durham, N.C. Parishioners there were worried that their confirmation ceremonies were functioning more as exit interviews, one last sacrament before 13-year-olds inevitably succumbed to secularism and left the church. The solution, they decided, was a two-year program welcoming adolescents into the community with equal doses of mentorship, Scripture and recreation.

Rite 13 has since spread to more than 1,300 churches in the U.S. Morris trains church leaders in the program by first explaining adolescent bodies. "I tell them that 13-year-olds need large-muscle exercise. They need lots of sleep. These things drive us crazy, but it's not their fault." Then he urges pastors to look past the physical exterior and see the opportunities within. "Never underestimate the spirituality of a 13-year-old," he counsels. "If I expect that I will encounter God in them, I'll get a lot farther than if I see the devil in them just because that's how they're acting."

Christian Smith, a co-author of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, says adolescent-specific church programs may be thriving, but his study of more than 3,000 teenagers left him wondering how deep the experiences were. "At 13," says Smith, "a lot of kids' mental and emotional lives are consumed by school, sports, media, maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend, so they don't have a lot of room for deeper thought." For many 13-year-olds, God is less an eternal truth than a friend helping them get through a really tough year.

Tristan Osgood, 13, who plays electric guitar in Grace Chapel's band, needed help when his grandfather died last year. He knew that the Bible says he would see his grandfather again someday, but he didn't feel certain enough. Then came the Grace Chapel winter retreat in New Hampshire. "I just went out into the snow," says Tristan. "I was cold, but suddenly I didn't care. It was like there's this barrier around you, just you and God, like you could bawl your eyes out and nobody would care." It was the moment that Tristan had been waiting for. He had met God, and his heart told him what his mind couldn't: that he would definitely see his grandfather again someday.