Photo by Sammie Chaffin on Unsplash.
The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (CPYU) takes the role of parents and youth pastors seriously. And it takes seriously the need for helping youth ministry leaders gain a footing in a world of ever-changing conversations about human sexuality and gender.
On Nov. 7 Walt Mueller of CPYU and Duffy Robbins of Grove City College will host a three-day symposium to help parents and youth pastors understand current conversations about human sexuality and gender — and how these ideas affect their children’s beliefs.
The event will help believers deepen their biblical and theological foundation, broaden their apologetic for affirming the goodness of expressing sexual intimacy within the bonds of marriage between a man and a woman, and strengthen skills in helping children and teens live out biblical truths on sex and gender.
Limited to 25 participants, the symposium starts with affirming a historic, orthodox Chrisitan sexual ethic and will build on this premise, not debate it. The small group size will promote deep conversation on these issues, with everyone expected to participate. And participants must come prepared; before attending they are expected to read “God and the Transgender Debate” by Andrew Walker or “Love Into Light” by Peter Hubbard, preferably both.
Since 1989 Walt Mueller and CPYU have been helping Christian parents prepare to engage the mission field down the hall – the teenagers brooding in their bedrooms. In the 1980s Mueller was a youth pastor in suburban Philadelphia when a group of parents came to him with a request: Could he help them understand their teenagers?
Now those teens from the 1980s are all grown up, as are their children, but the problem of 40 years ago remains: parents and pastors don’t recognize the world in which teens are living today. As Mueller sometimes says, teens are swimming in the soup of the culture, but the soup of the ’80s had a fraction of the ingredients that fill the pot today.
The symposium is one of many resources that CPYU offers to help parents and ministry leaders not only understand youth culture, but help teens become believers whose lives are informed by Scripture and committed to Christ.
The symposium will take place November 7-10 at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and though space is limited, there are still some spots available. Learn more and register here.