Building Positive Relationships of Trust and Safety with Youth in the Church

I was the Sunday School teacher for 14-15 year olds when Come Follow Me came out, with a class composed almost entirely of Young Men who had a certain reputation for being "difficult." The bishopric, other ward members, and parents of the youth in my class all gave me similar warnings.

In actuality, they were fine. They were normal kids having normal problems. They had the same needs as any other teenagers. The warnings I was receiving were not accurate reflections of the youth. They did, however, give me some insight into the unhealthy expectations parents in my ward were putting on their children to toe every single line perfectly, with no deviation.

I didn't do that to them. That's the single most important thing I gave them: the slack to be a normal kid, rather than members of "the chosen generation." I tried to love them for who they were, rather than who or what they were pretending to be. I accepted the fact that a significant number of them were only there because they were forced to be and were giving me the courtesy of their limited attention. I understood that relationship and accepted it, without any expectations for them to change it against their will.

I respected them, even when they didn't always respect me. I validated their feelings, including their desire not to be at church. When they saw I wasn't going to rat them out to their parents for things they said and did, that they were free to be themselves, that they could be on their phones and I wasn't going to take it personally, they opened up to me. They gave me the chance to speak to their real concerns. It didn't happen every Sunday. I didn't expect it to happen every Sunday. But it did happen. And it only happened because I earned their trust, rather than expecting them to just give it to me when I'd done nothing to earn it.

I prepared a spiritual buffet every Sunday and didn't criticize them for what they did or didn't take. They could take what they wanted or just leave it all there. I didn't force them to do anything they didn't want to do or feel comfortable doing, including reading scriptures or praying. I didn't force them to be insincere in my presence.

And you know what? One of the most disruptive ones showed up at my house at 10 p.m. after she ran away from home during an argument with her father and asked if she could sleep at my house. She knew she was safe with me.

That's what my priority was. That was my motivation in everything I said and did. And just because every kid didn't become or stay active in the Church, go on a mission, get married in the temple, or follow the trajectory the Church had established for their lives, that doesn't mean I wasn't successful. I wasn't there to enforce rigid expectations on anyone.

Too many parents and leaders in the Church are unable to let go of what they think their success is supposed to look like with the youth to accept what is actually achievable.

Making the Church a safe place to come back to if they ever need help, rather than a place of achievement and conformity, is where we are. The lion's share of our youth aren't interested in serving missions, temple marriage, going to a church-sponsored school, or maintaining the Church's ideal relationship with organized religion into adulthood. They're going to be casual in their relationship with the Church, at best. We can align our messaging and social interactions with a more casual approach, without any judgment about what we think they should be doing instead. Or we can keep doing harm by telling folks they're not good enough for not wanting the lives the Church has laid out for them.

We can't say we're doing the former, while trying to constantly bait and switch into the latter. It doesn't work. We've surrounded ourselves with the consequences of what it looks like when we try.