Meeting Aims:
To answer the following questions: What does 'Honour thy father and mother' mean in a modern context? What steps can young people take to make sure that they are doing so? What does the world say about this? How can we witness through it?
To help young people think through what it means to ‘honour... father and mother' and to become more aware of tensions in family relationships. To create a sense of how the expectations of our culture can draw us away from fulfilling our biblical obligations. Remember that in some cases your group is likely to include children from single parent or step-family situations; be sensitive to this and don't talk as if everybody had the ‘regulation’ two parents! This outline will work best with young people who already have some Christian commitment.
Parent Swap (13 mins)
Give everybody a pen and two cards (one blue, one pink). Ask them to write their father's name on the blue one and their mother's on the pink. Then they should add to each card a few words describing: best features; most irritating habit; generosity level (0 to 5); strictness level (0 to 5); favourite phrase or saying; most embarrassing feature.
Once this is done, say: you now have five minutes to swap your parents for other people's. You should read the descriptions of parents you're offered, and choose only those that attract you; but in five minutes you must have a completely different set of parents from those you have at this moment. Go!
After five minutes, find out what has happened. Ask:
Who thinks they've made a good deal and are better off now than when they started?
Who would rather have their old parents back?
What kinds of attractions made you agree to swap your parents for someone else's?
What are the most important and valuable features that make parents worth having?
Now move into small groups. Ask them to complete these sentences, and share their results with each other:
The basic problem with my Dad is...
I hate it when my Mum...
If I could say just one thing to my parents, it would be...
Check on a few results. Say: parents can be massively frustrating as well as immensely lovable. Tonight we investigate how to live out what the Bible says we should do. Read Ephesians 6:2. Point out: this is ‘the first commandment with a promise’. If we do this right, we'll live longer and we'll remove unnecessary strain and stress from our lives. God's pattern of family relationships is crucial to our health and well-being. But times have changed...
Now in my day... (7 mins)
In small groups, investigate these verses: Matthew 21:28-30; 1 Timothy 3:4; Judges 6:30; Genesis 24:1-4 and Proverbs 13:24. (If they aren't good at looking passages up, have them printed out beforehand.) Ask: what's different about the kind of family relationships you see here? What has changed and what is the same now? How are families different from what they used to be? Write down the key differences. They might include: less respect for older generation, Dad's word no longer law, families spend less time together, greater career and financial independence.
Ask: how do these things make it easier, or more difficult, to honour our father and mother? Make the point that honouring parents isn't really part of Western culture any more (unlike, say, Chinese or African societies). Christians need to find a way to do it that is possible within the society we've built for ourselves.
Flashpoints (15 mins)
One good thing to examine might be: what are the main causes of the arguments between parents and children? Ask them to spend a moment recalling when they last had a big argument with their parents. Get a few people to tell you what it was about, why it happened, and how it was resolved.
Give each small group a copy of the ‘Top-Ten Flashpoints' (below) containing ten key reasons why parents and teenagers fall out. Ask them to put them in order of importance and add any others that they think have been missed. The ten are:
1. Comparisons: either you or your parents look at other families and wish things were different: ‘Siobhan gets to stay up all night...' or ‘James is such a good, polite lad to his parents...'
2. Age changes: when you feel you've grown to the stage where you need more space and independence, and they won't allow it...
3. Disagreements about limits: when you feel you should be free to do more than they will permit...
4. Peer pressure: when you act the way your friends want you to, rather than the way your parents want you to...
5. Transferred grievances: when you get annoyed about something at school, or outside the home, and behave badly to your parents because you're frustrated...
6. Thoughtlessness: when you just don't think about cleaning your room or helping with the dishes...
7. Feeling patronised: when you're treated like a child, or ignored, or judged unfairly...
8. Bad communication: when you just don't see what they're talking about, or vice versa...
9. Different priorities: when they value things differently from you...
10. Embarrassment: when they show you up in front of your friends...
After they have finished, combine results and find out what the top five are. Ask: how can we do better when these situations develop?
Place of honour (10 mins)
What does the Bible actually say we should do for our parents? Ask the small groups to come up with a list of timeless prescriptions, based on: Proverbs 1:8,9, Colossians 3:20-21, Matthew 10:37 and Hebrews 12:7-9. Discuss:
What about parents who aren't worthy of much respect - what should we do?
What kind of ‘discipline' (Hebrews 12) is okay, and what is too much?
What's a more important commitment than our loyalty to our parents?
How do things change as we grow older and leave home?
From everyone's results, put together a list of guidelines for honouring parents ‘21st century-style’. Ask: how can we make these things real in these areas of life: school work, jobs at home, conversations with our parents, use of money or free time, behaviour towards brothers or sisters?
Go for it! (5 mins)
Now ask each small group to work out just three things they can do this week which will help apply these principles to their own lives more fully. Get them to write down what they commit themselves to. Giving each member of the small group a copy so that they won't forget, you can pray for one another through the week and can check back next time how well things have gone.
Wrap-up (5 mins)
Look back at the three lists you've drawn up tonight: the key differences that come from living in the modern world; the most likely flashpoints in parent-teen relationships; and the essential biblical principles we must apply. After reminding yourselves of your conclusions, pray together that God will help you behave wisely at home, and make disciplined choices, so that your relationship with your parents fulfils God's pattern for family life and demonstrates the attractiveness of Christian living. Pray for the three things you're each committed to trying out; and ask God to give you the power to carry them through successfully.
John Allan is based at Belmont Chapel, Exeter, UK
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