April 22, 2002

Teenagers need 'ministry of blessing'
from parents, Ross tells Hispanics
___By Dan Martin
___Texas Baptist Communications
___HOUSTON--Teenagers need a "ministry of blessing" from their parents, a seminary professor told youth workers at the Texas Baptist Hispanic Youth and Singles Congreso.
___Richard Ross from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary spoke to youth workers attending the Congreso in Houston.
___He encouraged parents to give teenagers "unfailing love." He contrasted unfailing love with the more prevalent "marketplace love" generally given by parents to teenagers.
___"Marketplace love looks like love," he said, but is based on the premise that "if you give me something I like, I will give you warm strokes."
___Marketplace love happens when parents tell their teens if they make good grades or excel in sports or keep their rooms clean, "then the parent will give them something that looks like love," Ross added.
___But what teenagers need from parents is "unfailing love," he urged. "It is love that says, 'Nothing you can do can make me love your less and nothing you can do can make me love your more.' It is unfailing love, the way that God loves us. The teenager needs to know the parent loves them. Period."
___Ross, who was a founder of the True Love Waits program of sexual abstinence, also encouraged parents to make their children feel significant. "Many teenagers may have never felt that."
___Parents also should provide emotional security for their teenagers, Ross said. "They see kids all around them whose lives and families have fallen apart. They need to know that their relationships are going to last."
___Ross and Gus Reyes, consultant with the Center for Strategic Evangelism at the Baptist General Convention of Texas, have co-written a book suggesting ways parents can reconnect with their teenagers.
___The book, which Ross said offers help in "rebuilding the relationship between parents and teenagers," is called "30 Days."
___Also at the Congreso, Armando Morales challenged young people to engage in "risky love."
___The youth pastor at Templo Iglesia Bautista in Lubbock told participants that "risky love" will cost them, because "just as Jesus paid the ultimate price of love for us and our souls, we are to love others unselfishly without limit or condition."
___He challenged them to share their faith in Jesus Christ and said that engaging in such "risky love" is a full-time job.
___Like the Good Samaritan, "every single day we pass people by," he said, encouraging his listeners to engage in the risky love of sharing Jesus Christ with those who do not know him.
___"Don't see a Hispanic or a black or a white. See a lost person. See a person who does not know Jesus Christ as his or her Savior."

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