Imagine you just walked into church on Sunday Morning, you greet a few people at the door, everyone is dressed nicely and all smiles, you grab a bulletin and head for a seat.

Suddenly you see a teenager sitting in a pew near the back of the church, he has long, dyed hair, is dressed in baggy pants, has a t-shirt with a bands name on it, he has wrist bands on and is wearing black logger boots with the laces undone.

What is your first impression?

The kid with some problems?
He has a chip on his shoulder?
His parents need to give him some discipline?
He’s rebelling and looking for attention?

To many Christians this is what they see but if you were at my church this description is of the pastor’s son. He is the youth group leader, plays in a Christian band and leads a teenage worship service weekly. He and his girlfriend have chosen abstinence; he preaches to his peers and is about as secure as teenagers get.

The Christian youth of today are not “your fathers Oldsmobile” they are embracing new means to learn, worship and share Gods word. Christian heavy metal and Christian rap, websites, pod casts and digital social networks are their tools.

I worshipped at a conservative Lutheran church a few years back and volunteered to be a chaperone for a youth rally called Youth Encounter. I have worked with youth since I was just out of high school but this weekend really blew me away. It was like a spiritual rock concert: bands, powerful speakers, break out sessions and personal one on one heart to heart talks with many kids in middle school.

Many of these kids opened their hearts to me and talked about their love of God, peer pressure and their struggles with sex, drinking and school, their hopes and dreams for the future and how they wished their parents were “cooler.” At the end of the weekend these kids all wished that their church back home was more like this place. They said that they wanted to worship God in their generation’s way, not the stuffy old conservative way of their parents.

I learned a valuable lesson that weekend. The youth are the future of the church and of Christianity and if we share the word of God with them in ways they can relate to, you can reach many more youth and get into their world to mentor them. You also cannot judge a book by its cover. As Tim Kimmel says in his book ‘Grace Based Parenting’ when a conservative father wants to “correct” a young man with long hair at a youth meeting “Does God judge us by the length of our hair or the length of our character?”

“For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Matthew 7:2 (NIV)