7 Essential Roles for Christian Parents Raising Teens with Faith, Wisdom, and Grace

The Smiths family raised they children eating dinner together regularly, attending church together, and even praying together each evening. To their surprise, one evening their daughter Jackie annoucenes she met someone at work and claimed to be in love. "I thought a lot about it and even prayed. I'm moving in with Tom," she insisted. "He's the one."

The Smiths are heartbroken. What happened?

While church involvement and family activities are valuable, teens today need more. Even if they attend youth group, teach Sunday School, or go on mission trips, those experiences alone won’t always prepare them for the challenges they face. In a world flooded with social media, conflicting worldviews, and mental health struggles, even kids raised in church wrestle with doubt, identity, and pressure to fit in.

That’s where parents come in. Your kids need more than rules or routines—they need you to walk with them through life’s tough questions. They need space to ask, “Why does faith matter?” and hear honest conversations about real struggles. They need to see you living out your faith, not just on Sundays, but in the mess of everyday life—making tough choices, forgiving others, and trusting God when it’s hard.

Encouraging your teen to live boldly for Jesus means helping them filter out the noise of the world and cling to God’s Word. It means reminding them that following Christ isn’t always popular, but it’s worth it. And when they stumble, they need your love and grace, pointing them back to God’s truth.

The world may offer shifting opinions, but God’s Word remains steady. Your teens need that anchor, and they need you to model it. Walk with them, challenge them, and encourage them daily—because their faith journey won’t just happen by chance. It grows with your intentional, loving guidance every step of the way. 

Here are seven Sciptural roles a parent has in the life if their teen:

Role #1: Protector of Purity

"It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;" (1 Thessalonians 4:3) 

Few of us would hand over a brand-new car to even a trustworthy friend without defining some strict guidelines. We protect valuable things.

How much more should we protect our teenagers' sexual purity? Teens face a steady stream of temptations that compromise their mental and sexual purity. Parents must clearly define, with their teens, a Biblical standard for movie, music, and book selections. Philippians 4:8 clearly establishes the necessary criteria: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

Parents of teens should not be concerned only about media's influence. We also are responsible for training our children to relate to real people, particularly of the opposite sex. Recently my teenage son and I developed guidelines for communication with girls. We typed and posted the difference between leading a girl on and treating her like a sister in Christ. We also have taught our teen about the characteristics of courtship and how it supports the Biblical principle of purity.     

Role #2: Disciplinarian

"Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?" (Hebrews 12:7) 

As children get older, it is tempting to avoid conflict at any cost, even the cost of forsaking our responsibility to be disciplinarians. However, when parents decide to "just get along" with teens, the home environment becomes an incubator for rebellion.

Discipline is an expression of love. Teens must be taught that if they break curfew or talk disrespectfully, the consequence of their rebellious choices—discipline—is an expression of our love for them. The goal of Biblical discipline is not to "get even" but rather to restore what is most precious to God: relationship. Teach this foundational truth to your children early, so that they will not be easily deceived by the persuasive lie that parental discipline is rooted in a selfish need to control or to restrict freedom.

Role #3: Caretaker of the Weak 

"It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble." (Luke 17:2) 

Being emotionally or physically bullied by an older sibling has become a universal rite of passage for many young people. A poignant way to convey Christ's presence in our home is by raising teenagers to walk the narrow path of protecting—not bullying—their younger siblings.

As parents, we need to explain to our teens that their emotional and physical maturity should provide a sense of safety among younger siblings, not fear. Parents, especially fathers, need to model gentleness and self-control to their children.

Role #4: Counselor

"The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out." (Proverbs 20:5) 

When Dad comes home from work and asks how things are going, a teenager is likely to say "fine" and leave it at that. If parents aren't careful, these monosyllabic utterances can easily become an acceptable style of communication.

Realize that teens have a lot to say. Beneath those one-word utterances is a heart filled with both delights and disappointments. The content of a teen's heart, though, is often not visible to a teen's parents unless they take time to ask probing questions. Instead of asking, "How are you today?" ask, "What is something that made you laugh today?" Instead of asking "How was church?" ask "What did you find encouraging about the sermon today?"

I regularly schedule one-on-one time with each of my three children. When I am communicating privately with my teen, there are no outside pressures or distractions, making it easy to talk about things that deeply matter to us. This regular investment of time makes intimate conversation a realistic standard for our daily communication.

Role #5: Encourager 

"Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity." (1 Timothy 4:12) 

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a teenager when she gave birth to our Savior. As a teen, David defeated Goliath, the Philistines' most cruel and intimidating warrior. At a young age, King Josiah, despite poor parenting, turned his heart toward God and destroyed the idols in Judah. As parents, we need to share these stories and others like them. As we share stories of teen nobility, our youth will rise to the challenge of living for God now.

Parental support is crucial. We must find ways to convey the message that being young is a blessing. When teens routinely hear parents speaking well of them, they are likely to believe what God does—that youth is a blessing and a choice time for serving Him.

Role # 6: Lover of Wisdom

"The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding." (Proverbs 4:7) 

When God offered Solomon anything he wanted, Solomon asked for wisdom. As a result, God blessed him with many other things. Does your teen prize wisdom above anything, even winning the spelling bee or the gymnastics tournament?

Teaching wisdom doesn't require a disregard for academic knowledge or athletic pursuits, but we shouldn't encourage the pursuit of these things so single-mindedly that we fail to take advantage of important life lessons. For example, if two siblings are arguing and name calling, put the books down and carefully identify and address the heart issues (pride, malice, and resentment) that often result in these kinds of disputes.

If we pay little or no attention to these heart issues, our teens may come to believe that what they do is more important than who they are. When teens feel that parents are more interested in teaching subject matter (educating their minds) than developing their character (educating their souls), they are at risk for placing a higher value on external things, such as income, educational degrees, or popularity, than the inner workings of the Holy Spirit.

Role #7: Grace Giver

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." (1 John 4:10) 

God has given all of us unmerited favor: grace. How can we make home a place where teens learn to rest in that grace? First, we need to frequently meditate on verses about God's grace. Deuteronomy 11:18 instructs us with these words: "Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes." My wife has blessed our family by placing framed Scripture verses about God's goodness throughout the house. We also display pictures and objects that remind us of God's grace. One favorite is a crown of thorns. During the Christmas season, it adorns the top of our tree, and throughout the rest of the year it hangs on our front room wall. Another object we treasure is a picture that my oldest son drew when he was little: "God in the Sunset." It is a picture of Jesus, with a radiant smile, standing beneath the sun.   

In addition to thinking about God's grace, we need to model it in our relationships. My wife and I try to live by Ephesians 4:26, which warns, "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath." When parents obey this verse, teens are blessed. When Mom and Dad maintain a sense of urgency about resolving conflict, tremendous confidence is unleashed in the spirit of children, reassurance that God is active in life of the family. On the other hand, when one or both parents demonstrate chronic bitterness and unforgiveness, children hesitate to believe what parents or pastors profess about God's grace. Teens are especially sensitive to any incongruity between what we say and what we actually do.

My teenage son once commented that peers understand teens better than parents because other teens are going through the same things. I asked him a question: If he wanted to learn about flying, would he ask an inexperienced peer in his piloting class, or would he ask a seasoned pilot? He got the point. When it comes to growing up, parents are the seasoned pilots. Although we do not have a perfect understanding of what our teenagers are going through, we are far more acquainted with the complex terrain of adolescence than even their most mature friends are.

Don't leave it up to someone else to steady the lamplight of God's Holy Word near your teen's feet or to spur him on to good deeds. We, especially fathers, must continually do that until they themselves can walk according to the pattern of Jesus.

Randy Saller and his wife Amy Jo homeschool their three children in Lake Villa, Illinois. Randy is a learning disabilities specialist for a public school and a freelance writer. He has written for Turtle magazine, The Old Schoolhouse^® Magazine, and Chicago Special Parent. 

Photo credit - ©Getty Images/Klaus Vedfelt