I get the privilege of ministering and serving with teenagers almost every day. There are some things that challenge me, fascinate me and drive me absolutely coo-coo about our teenagers. I love’m and hate’m at times.

Love’m
1. Authentic. What you see is often what you get. They can be genuine and real. They can see through your junk. Sometimes brutally honest.
2. Commited to relationships. They want significant and deep relationships. Friends are really their most important desire. If you got their trust you got a loyal friend.
3. Open-books. They are curious and willing to engage questions and doubts in their faith and God, more so than the older giants.
4. Momentous. They have constant energy and think they can change the world. They had contagious passion and willing to light the world up for Christ
5. Cultured. They know a little bit of everything from the past hundred years of music, movies and media.
6. Williams Carrey-ites. They expect great things from God and expect to do great things for God. They often have a big view of God.
7. Learners. They are sponges that soak up Gods Word. They want to know truth, to be challenged in their thinking, and discover how it applies to them right now!
8. Complex. They are simple, yet sophisticated.
9. Crafty. They have brilliant ideas. Sometimes those ideas can get them into trouble.
10. Contagious. They forever make me want to be youthful and spunky.

Hate’m
1. Busybodies. They have jam-packed schedules and pride themselves on busyness.
2. Entitlement. They think they can have want ever they want when they want it. They are horrible at waiting sometimes. They are big consumers, but I think they learn this from wasteful parents.
3. Compartmentalizatism. They are good at separating areas of their lives. They do not mix faith with school, parents, sports and other things. They are quite bi-polar in their faith.
4. Media Addicts. They are a gajillion times better at texting, facebooking, gaming, iPoding, and technology than any generation. And they flaunt it.
5. Worldly. They are easily influenced by what the world was is wonderful. They are swayed by sex, listen to toxic philosophies that cloud their faith, and chose to be torn between two radically different worlds.
6. Family Mess. They often have families that are absent, broken, and not living biblically.
7. Authority Issues. They do not trust or listen to those who are over them. They back talk in disrespect, often to God too.
8. Lazy. They do not like to say more than one word at times and think about it. They zone out to what matters at times.
9. Discernment. They will make decisions based on what others think of them. They do not make decisions often based on personal convictions.
10. Pants on the ground [check out this video]. Whoever invented the idea of young dudes wearing low-ride pants with boxers should be sent to fashion school.