Help For Counseling Overwhelmed Teens w/ Dr. Kristin Kellen

Teenagers are drowning in noise, and most of them don’t have the brain bandwidth or life experience to sort it all out yet. From the SBC 2026 exhibit hall, we talk with Dr. Kristen Kellen about what it looks like to counsel teens faithfully when anxiety, comparison, and overwhelm feel like the background music of adolescence.

If you've ever wondered:
"Am I doing enough for struggling students?"
"When should I listen...and when should I refer?"
"How do I help teenagers who feel anxious all the time?"
...this conversation is for you.

We get specific about emotional health and why it can’t be separated from the rest of life. Sleep, food, hydration, exercise, and screen time matter more than we want to admit, especially for developing bodies and brains. Then we challenge a popular idea that quietly shapes teen culture: the belief that emotions are authoritative and binding. Dr. Kellen gives language that protects kids from shame while still giving them agency, helping them move from “I feel anxious, so I am anxious” to “I’m experiencing anxiety, and I can respond wisely.”

For youth pastors and youth leaders, we dig into the difference between helping a student feel better in the moment and helping them become healthy over time. We talk modeling emotional regulation, naming feelings without being ruled by them, and using practical steps that build resilience. We also explore suffering and spiritual maturity, why Scripture assumes hardship, and how patience and the fruit of the Spirit grow through repeated practice, not instant change. If you’ve wanted a clearer framework for Christian counseling and pastoral care with teens, this conversation will give you traction.

We talk about why so many teenagers feel overwhelmed and how we can respond with wisdom instead of panic. We lay out practical ways to help students name their feelings, build agency, and grow toward long-term health and spiritual maturity. 

In This Episode

• Why so many teenagers feel overwhelmed today
• The relationship between brain development and emotional maturity
• Why feelings are real—but shouldn't become our authority
• Helping students become healthy instead of simply helping them feel better
• Simple counseling principles every youth pastor can practice
• Why modeling emotional regulation matters more than having all the answers
• Building spiritual resilience instead of instant relief
• The role suffering plays in Christian maturity
• How youth ministry can become a "laboratory" for practicing the Fruit of the Spirit
• Knowing when to partner with parents, counselors, and mental health professionals
• Why your faithful presence matters more than you realize

Quotes

• "If we always focus on the fix, students may never learn the skill."
• "Teenagers don't just need answers—they need adults who model healthy faith."
• "Youth ministry is a long game played inside a very short season."
• "Don't underestimate the ministry of simply being present."
• "Our goal isn't just to remove suffering—it's to help students meet Christ in the middle of it."

Transcript

Welcome From SBC Live

Zac Workun 0:06

Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Youth Ministry Booster Podcast, hanging out at SBC Live here in the Exhibit Hall. It's it's another day. Uh talking with friends, hanging out with some of our favorite people, and so we continue with Seminary Summer. Dr. Kellen, thank you for joining us today, all the way from across the hall.

Kristin Kellen 0:25

Absolutely. It's good to be here. It's good to walk over. No traffic. So good.

Zac Workun 0:28

Yeah, no traffic. That's right. My way of Southeastern. Thank you so much. We're excited to have you today. We've had some really great friends all summer. We've been recording here and there. We're excited to have a conversation that I think is both an important topic and in many ways, sometimes a taboo topic. Maybe not that we can't talk about it, but we're not sure how to talk about it. And I'm excited for your guidance and your clarity as we talk about what it looks like to counsel teens well and faithfully. But before we get into that, I wanted folks to get to know you and your chickens. So tell us a little more about how our professor author friend is teaching kids to raise chickens as punishment. Go on. Maybe we need to institute this more in our youth groups for middle schoolers. Your kids have to feed the chickens when they get bored.

Kristin Kellen 1:15

You know, some parents, if their children say I'm bored, they hand them a chore to do, right? Go do the dishes, go fold your laundry. We live on a farm, we have close to 300 chickens. Um actually all the rest of our pigs got taken to the butcher this morning. So yay, bacon. Uh and we have a handful of bacon for the summer, yes.

Zac Workun 1:32

Amazing.

Kristin Kellen 1:33

Exactly, exactly. Uh so we tell our kids if you say you're bored, uh, you get to go get eggs or you get to feed chickens or you get to go, you know, do something outside, check on the pig's water, that sort of thing. Oh my god. Uh they have learned very quickly not to say that five-letter word in our mouth.

Zac Workun 1:48

Oh my gosh. But you but uh so farm girl now, but not always city girl first, right? Like this is like new adventure for y'all?

Kristin Kellen 1:54

Very new adventure. I like to say this was not on my life's bingo card. Okay. Uh, but because I love my husband and this is his dream, okay. He just wants to be outside on a tractor.

Zac Workun 2:04

He just that's just it.

Kristin Kellen 2:05

It just is. It's peaceful for him.

Zac Workun 2:07

John Deere Kellen, absolutely. Yeah. Oh, oh, okay. Starting fights, all right.

Kristin Kellen 2:13

I'm sure we'll get to another one of those, but that's it. Koboda Kellen.

Zac Workun 2:15

Kaboda Kellen, that's a nice like that. Sounds like an action hero, right? Yeah, it's good. It's good.

Kristin Kellen 2:19

So on a farm, uh, that's about a three-year venture. The hope long term is to train seminary students who want to be missionaries and to bring them out to the farm, teach them agricultural skills, and then send them to closed countries. I love it. With a platform. So that's the long-term goal of that farm.

Zac Workun 2:34

Well, it makes me smile a little bit. So some of our dearest friends uh are missionaries in Southeast Asia. Yeah. Uh, and they uh are in the water filtration and farming business.

Kristin Kellen 2:45

I know some of those.

Zac Workun 2:46

But they were trained as a nurse and physical therapist, and so hearing friends that were engineers turned farmers is not far off. And I would even say farming probably keeps you pretty faithful and biblical. It feels like all the best uh illustrations of the Bible are from the farm.

Kristin Kellen 3:02

You know, there's there's so much connected to creation and the way that God created the world to be and how it works best. And just like we see humans flourishing when we live the way God created us to live, creation does too. Animals do too. And so there's so much that we can even missionally tie back to the way God created animals to exist alongside one another, alongside us. So uh you're about to get me nerding out on farm stuff and theology, but uh, that's my husband's happy place.

Why Teens Feel Overwhelmed

Zac Workun 3:31

Oh, I love it. I love it. But I do think that language of flourishing is one of the things that we want to bring to the conversation today because I think that is that's a helpful lens for how we talk about teenagers today. Because I feel like if you were to ask most of us about most of our students, our teenagers, our kids, ones that feel like they belong to the time that we have them, it doesn't feel like a lot of them are flourishing in the ways in which we hoped. And in many ways, it doesn't feel like that's their fault. And so I I wanted to start by kind of asking this kind of broad question of like, why does it feel like teenagers or students today are all overwhelmed? Like that's kind of the best word that I can come up with. Is that it just everything feels overwhelming or that they're overwhelmed? And how do we how do we talk about that and like in healthy ways?

Kristin Kellen 4:14

Yeah, that's a great question. And there's I don't know that there's a simple answer, but here's where I'll start. You know, if you were to poll a hundred people and say how many of you want to go back to middle school, uh-huh. It'd be crickets. Yeah, right.

Zac Workun 4:25

So there's nobody's signing up for it. Exactly.

Kristin Kellen 4:27

So there's this kind of normative across generations.

Zac Workun 4:31

Nobody wants to puberty again. Yeah, yeah.

Kristin Kellen 4:33

Exactly, exactly. So there's this developmental piece that happens across the board.

Zac Workun 4:37

Yeah.

Kristin Kellen 4:37

And that's what we experience, right? I wouldn't want to go back to middle school or show some photos.

Zac Workun 4:41

Seventh grade was the hardest year of my life, yeah.

Kristin Kellen 4:43

Yes, yes. Poor fashion choices.

Zac Workun 4:44

Yes.

Kristin Kellen 4:45

But but now our teenagers are inundated with voice after voice, opinion after opinion, standard after standard. And so, whereas, you know, we grew up and it was like, who's the model in the magazine? Now it's who's on their scroll that they're seeing for two hours a day.

Speaker 1 5:01

Yes.

Kristin Kellen 5:01

And so they're just so overwhelmed. But then developmentally, their brains aren't done growing. And so there's this piece of that God made them in such a way that they're not adults yet. Yeah. And they can't utilize that discernment fully. Yes. They may be believers, they may be growing in the faith and dwelt by the spirit, but developmentally, they don't have the life experience to understand all of those opinions and be able to sift through them with any muscle memory like we would have.

Zac Workun 5:30

Everything weighs the same weight. Exactly. And that is both part of growing up, but the hardest part of growing up, um, coupled with the endless exposure, like that's that's always a thing that I think so much about. So admittedly, I'm the dad of a 10-year-old and an eight-year-old, uh, and like they're walking into life that is never turned off. Like we we have not had them have online presence, but that's not far off. And for those that have teenagers that are just always that way, like that, I mean, if it never shuts off, how does it ever wind down? Like how does the whelm ever not be over?

Kristin Kellen 6:09

Yeah, yeah. And it and it's hard enough for us as adults, yeah, right, where we can kind of sense in ourselves, I need to put it down or I need to step away because we have self-control and maturity. They don't even have that internal governance. Yeah, that's right, that's right. They're kids.

Speaker 1 6:22

Yeah.

Kristin Kellen 6:23

Uh, and so we've got to help them do that. Um, and it's it's a dark world out there. I mean, people are not for their flourishing, so we've been combating that.

Zac Workun 6:32

And I think we'll we'll talk more about it. You address it in the book. Um, but I I wanted to, if you could give us a crash course a little bit, because I think this has become uh a popular conversation.

Rethinking Emotional Health And Feelings

Zac Workun 6:41

But what are we getting wrong about emotional health? I think that's where we see uh, you know, we see the storm, we feel the darkness, and so we're wanting to go ahead and diagnose it, but then we often are maybe a little bit too quick to put everything into just two or three buckets, or we kind of like just group our students into because that's always my fear is like I think they're all overwhelmed, but man, that seems like a gross like overestimation. And yet also I know they're going through stuff. So what are what are we maybe getting wrong mostly about emotional health? Or give us some better language to talk to our students.

Kristin Kellen 7:13

Yeah, we don't have like four hours, right?

Zac Workun 7:16

We don't, we don't, but well, we'll we will we'll recommend resources at the the comments below. Yes, yes.

Kristin Kellen 7:20

Yeah, no, and that's such a man, it's such a needed question because a handful of things come to mind. One is that our emotional health is not separated out from the rest of our health. God made us holistic beings. And so you mentioned like nobody wants to puberty again. Yeah, but our our bodies change and hormones change and we ain't who we were.

Zac Workun 7:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kristin Kellen 7:41

Yes, even like minute to minute, you know, kids bumping into a wall because their legs are growing. Yeah, you know, and so our emotional health is so tied to our physical health, our spiritual health, our relational health, our mental health, all of those pieces. And yet at the same time, here's number two I think we tend to operate in our culture as if our emotions are authoritative and binding.

Speaker 1 8:05

Yes.

Kristin Kellen 8:05

And what I mean by that, you I think you get where I'm going here, is that if I feel something, I'm a passive recipient of that feeling. And I have no ability to respond to it. And that's simply not true.

Zac Workun 8:17

Or or to master it. Correct. That if if I feel it, that's the truest thing happening to me.

Kristin Kellen 8:22

Yes, it's authoritative. Uh and and some of sometimes we go so far as to say, others are bound by my emotions, and mine are authoritative. I'm entitled to them responding to the people.

Zac Workun 8:34

Say say more about that because I think you're hitting into the friction of what a lot of us are going through, is like, because because we don't want to downplay that what they're feeling is real. As someone that's kind of walking through a year of grief, like I am, I am freshly accustomed to I don't get to choose when I feel moments of sadness, and yet also I I would hope to not be um so shaped by them that I would not be able to forge through them. Yes, yes, but I'm also 40 and not 14.

Kristin Kellen 9:01

Absolutely. And you can distinguish between those. But even in your language, Zach, you're you're differentiating between that feeling, the kind of experiential piece, and your assessment and response. Yeah. And that's where I think we mess up with emotional health is we blend those two and say, because I feel anxious, I am anxious.

Speaker 1 9:19

Okay.

Kristin Kellen 9:20

No, I'm experiencing an anxious thought or feeling. I can assess it and I can respond to it. And there's a maturity aspect and experience aspect of that. But again, I think when we when we say, no, I feel anxious, and therefore, friend of mine or parent of mine, you have to acknowledge my anxiety and affirm that it's rational and it's valid. Well, it may not be.

Zac Workun 9:42

Yeah. And part of growing up You may just be exhausted and overwhelmed and stressed.

Kristin Kellen 9:47

Or hungry and need a nap, right? Elijah.

Zac Workun 9:50

So one of one of my other favorite professors that is shared uh talks about, she works with her college students that are, you know, freshmen and sophomores in college are also special classes of individuals.

Speaker 1 10:00

Yes.

Zac Workun 10:01

Uh newly found freedom, uh, autonomy. Um, but Dr. Carey often recommends that for most of them what they need is eight hours of sleep, uh, protein, and a shower.

Speaker 1 10:12

Absolutely.

Zac Workun 10:13

And that a lot of the stress they're feeling is true. They have assignments, they have work, but most undoubtedly there are some other physical things to connect to the health or the uh a mental check for the restfulness or the screen time that may be feeding how they're feeling.

Kristin Kellen 10:29

And screen time is certainly one of them brain stimulation. But I will tell parents you don't need a therapist to tell you have your kids sleep for eight or nine hours, get good meals, hydrate, exercise, care for your body because we all know we don't have our best thoughts and feelings at 3 a.m. when we're tired.

Zac Workun 10:49

That's right.

Kristin Kellen 10:50

But the 14-year-old who's having these spiral thoughts can't govern that quite as well as we can. And so we want to help them. We help their bodies be healthy, want to help them make good choices, help them distinguish between a feeling and then what they can do. They have agency over that feeling and response to it while not denying that they're actually feeling what they're feeling.

Zac Workun 11:10

Yeah.

Kristin Kellen 11:10

There's both in

Helping Teens Build Real Resilience

Kristin Kellen 11:11

there.

Zac Workun 11:11

I want to talk a little bit uh, because for our youth ministry listeners and friends, like we we start to feel, I think, some uh um responsibility for our teenagers. I mean, obviously they're not our kids, but we also care for them deeply. Yes. And we want the best for them. And so inside the limited time that we have them, both in the five to six years or three to four hours a week, we want the best for them. So, what is the difference between helping our students feel better and our students become healthy? Because I think sometimes it feels like we have such little time. We just want to try to fix the moment. This is the crying kid at camp. Yeah, and I and I I don't I don't want him or her to feel that way too much. I want to patch up. Sure. Um, and I I see my students that are constantly anxious and I want them to feel better. But what are some of the work that I can do, even in the limited time that I have them, to help them feel healthy?

Kristin Kellen 12:04

Yeah, no, great. Um, I'm gonna rattle off a few kind of as they come to mind. Don't underestimate the value of modeling for them. So parents and adults who you can emotionally regulate, you can you can model for them and and say it out loud as you're doing it. Here's an anxious, uh, worrying situation, here's how I'm thinking through it, here's how I'm responding to it, and here's why. Yeah. Be open about the way you're modeling that for those kiddos. So show them something more lovely.

Zac Workun 12:30

If we can say something more beautiful, something more healthy, more flourishing. Exactly.

Kristin Kellen 12:36

That they can see, oh, there's there's a difference between that grown-up and me. And that starts a kind of conversation themselves. Well, how do I, how do I do that? Yeah. Because that is better. I don't want to, nobody wants to be anxious all the time. But then I think as we engage with them, there is a sense of acknowledging, hey, like let's name what you're feeling. Yeah, where is that coming from? And now let's let's hold this outside of ourselves. Okay, in this moment, you're having the feeling or you're having the thought that this, what are you able to do about that? Okay. What is within your realm of influence or control? Let's do those things. Yeah. So if there's an assignment that's making you anxious, then how do you schedule time to do that assignment? Let's just be really practical about it while not letting that emotion be authoritative and ruling.

Zac Workun 13:24

To govern, to govern more than the reality of the situation. Okay.

Kristin Kellen 13:28

So helping them see this is maybe a disproportionate emotion.

Zac Workun 13:33

Yeah, yeah. Well, you're feeling you're feeling, but maybe it's more or less because of it.

Kristin Kellen 13:38

Yeah, and so it brings some rationale. We all know, and our brains work this way. When we are hyped up on emotion, whether it's sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, the thinking parts of our brain up here, shut down.

Zac Workun 13:50

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Kristin Kellen 13:52

And we don't think well.

Zac Workun 13:53

We're just reacting. We're just reacting.

Kristin Kellen 13:55

And so when we can help them just take some deep breaths and calm down and think more logically, nine times out of ten, they're gonna say, No, I think you're right. I don't think this is as big. It just feels big and that feels overwhelming. You're right, it does feel overwhelming, but we don't have to stay here. Yeah, we can name it, we can explore it, we can hold it outside of ourselves and say, Okay, Lord, how ought I to respond to this feeling? It's good because you've given me agency responsibility. And that takes practice. Yeah. So not thinking that the 12-year-old's gonna have it because you teach that lesson twice.

Zac Workun 14:29

Yes, it may have it again. But the important part is if we always focus on the fix, they won't ever learn the skill. And I think that that is something that even in our limited time, and this is part of I think, I mean, just some of the ways in which you've talked about um some simple counseling techniques for folks to understand, is that we we are practicing skills. Like these, these are these are practicing skills, uh, not solving problems. Right. Because some of the problems either are gonna be too big to solve or um maybe not even what the situation demands. Right. Right.

Kristin Kellen 15:00

And we've got to give them opportunities to practice that. So even on the other end of the spectrum, not rushing in to immediately say, no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, we've got this.

Speaker 1 15:10

Yeah.

Kristin Kellen 15:10

No, the these kids, especially teenagers, they're gonna launch into the world and it's gonna smack them in the face. It doesn't care about how they feel about something, right? So we've got to let them practice.

Zac Workun 15:21

Okay, so that's one of the questions

Suffering And Spiritual Maturity

Zac Workun 15:22

I want to ask you. We've asked a couple other people, um maybe a theological uh psychological intersection.

Kristin Kellen 15:29

Okay.

Zac Workun 15:30

What role does suffering play in spiritual maturity? Because this is something that's come up again and again that if we start acknowledging that we're not just trying to fix or placate, um, then we are giving room for suffering.

Speaker 1 15:42

Right.

Zac Workun 15:42

But we're not just giving room for suffering for no reason.

Speaker 1 15:44

Right, right.

Zac Workun 15:45

Because we actually think that there may be something not tangential but integral to what suffering means for who we're becoming.

Speaker 1 15:52

Yes.

Zac Workun 15:52

But give me better language in a way that doesn't sound like it's just heady theology, but it's like live reality.

Kristin Kellen 15:57

Yeah. No, and we may kind of circle it before we land in it. Well, that's okay, that's okay. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, I I love in the scriptures, it's never if you suffer. Right. It's always when you encounter yourself, when you suffer. And it always, the scriptures are always pointing towards this greater purpose. Yeah, and that purpose is godliness. It uses different words for that, but it's always godliness. Uh, and so trying to help them see not that we seek out suffering, yeah. Uh, and even I love Mike Imlet, who's a counselor at CCF, he says the alleviation of suffering is a kingdom agenda. Okay, it is a good thing to seek to alleviate suffering, but we also see the purpose in it. If we are at the same time sinner, sufferer, and saint in Christ, yeah, we we leave off a third of that reality if we don't understand the suffering part of it, right? In the Psalms. Yeah. We can't read the Psalms without seeing the deep suffering.

Zac Workun 16:51

Written to address it. That's right. Exactly.

Kristin Kellen 16:53

And so I think we have to hold this tension of saying suffering is a part of our lived experience. It is God given for very clear purposes. Yeah. Book of Job.

Speaker 1 17:03

Yeah.

Kristin Kellen 17:03

Uh at the same time, he's given us grace to try to alleviate suffering as we learn through it. And I think we can hold both of those in tension.

Zac Workun 17:13

Do you think holding both of those is one of the key signs of maturity? I do, yeah, yeah.

Kristin Kellen 17:17

I and I like the way you say that. That yes, is recognizing our our primary goal, even for counseling, yeah, isn't to alleviate a problem.

Zac Workun 17:27

Anxious no more.

Kristin Kellen 17:28

You know, that that I think is a s could be a side effect of pursuing the Lord and living his way. He gives it to us for our flourishing. Uh, but he may not take that from us. He has he has made, allowed us to be some people are constitutionally different, yeah, right? Some people are more of a depressed personality, some are more anxious personalities. I don't think that's inherently sinful. Yeah, it can become and be more likely to be sinful. Yeah. Uh, but we're all different. And so, how do how do we steward what God has given us and how he's made us while becoming more like him at the same time? Okay. I think we're still saying like staying philosophical.

Zac Workun 18:08

So let's say this way um uh we we live in a time we've addressed that it's overwhelming, we address that we're facing suffering. You use some some language that I want to come back to about muscle memory or skill refining.

Training Patience In A Distracted World

Zac Workun 18:22

So, what are some spiritual muscles that we should be training uh in youth ministry when it comes to living in a world that's distracted? Um, um, when the algorithm is tempting us to be anxious or to compare? What is some spiritual strength training that we can the what's the resistance and the resilience that we can help a 13 to 17 year old um train in?

Kristin Kellen 18:45

Right, man. The the fruit of the spirit are coming to mind. Yeah, yeah. Um and practice these things.

Zac Workun 18:50

Yes.

Kristin Kellen 18:51

I'm saying this half jokingly. I stopped praying for patience a long time ago. But uh, because the Lord will test you in it when you pray for it. We really do think patience in the sense of we live in this instant gratification. It's all about me. I want what I want when I want it, and I can get it where we live. You can't.

Zac Workun 19:09

Amazon's about to introduce two-hour delivery instead of two-day delivery. It's crazy, yeah. Not out in the country. Well, not y'all, maybe not y'all. But drones are coming. Yeah, that's another kind of fear.

Kristin Kellen 19:19

But but the sense of which the best things that the Lord brings us, we often have to wait for. Yeah. And so helping our teenagers see, I may they may feel a high level of distress, anxiety, depression, fear, fill in the blank. But to be patient for the Lord to do that work because it's meaningful, that process is meaningful, I think is a is a skill. Um, and then obviously the the rest of the fruits of the spirit. Um just asking the Lord to cultivate those in us. But it's it's interesting. Jeremy Pierre was talking about this at a concert uh conference recently. Although the Lord gives us gifts and the fruit of the spirit, he doesn't just like bam, you're wise. Right, right, right, right. Bam, you're patient. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Lord cultivates these gifts and these fruits in us over the course of our Christian life. And sometimes we have this wrong theology of saying, well, I'm a Christian now, I should be able to do this. Lived experience, obviously, does us otherwise.

Zac Workun 20:13

That's right, that's right.

Kristin Kellen 20:14

Um, and so helping our teenagers see there's a lot to be developed, and you and I both know the more we grow, the more we realize we got a lot more growing to do.

Zac Workun 20:22

Absolutely, absolutely. They don't know that. They don't know that, but they're learning it. And I think uh I think maybe even we we've talked about in other situations uh moving youth ministry from the classroom to the laboratory or even the gym of practicing these things. So, like, in what ways can I not just proclaim patience, but can we practice patience? Are there fun creative ways to like delay the gratification of maybe snack time is at the end? Maybe the fun thing comes after the hard thing. Yeah, which is small, like again, we're living in a 60 to 90 minute programmatic window or over the course of a 12-week summer. But what are some of the ways that we can bake in the things that we want to illustrate and strengthen for them?

Kristin Kellen 21:05

That's a great question. Um this may not be the answer maybe you thought you were gonna get, uh, but I'd say give them more responsibility.

Zac Workun 21:13

Okay. Have them take the chickens ownership.

Kristin Kellen 21:16

Hey, they can come feed my chickens any day and get it.

Zac Workun 21:19

Feed the chickens, that's right. That's right. Happy to welcome them to the bar. Yeah, yeah.

Kristin Kellen 21:22

Um, but give them ownership and responsibility so that if it if it fails, it fails. And they get to learn in that laboratory. Yeah, right. So are there pieces of ministering to the middle schoolers or the younger kids that they can take ownership of and they've got to actually learn by doing, yeah, but see the delayed gratification because we know you pour into kids, it's gonna be years, decades, youth ministry is the practice of patient delay.

Zac Workun 21:47

We we talk about it around here that it's a long game and a short season. That we're doing all this six year work that we hope pays off at 20.

Kristin Kellen 21:54

But it's so meaningful. We've been in a position, my husband and I served as youth leaders at a church we were at several. Several years ago.

Zac Workun 22:00

It sounds like when you when you write in here, it sounds like it. Yeah, yeah. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell.

Kristin Kellen 22:05

Um, and now these this is not this is not just psychology for teenagers.

Zac Workun 22:09

This is youth leader. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have teen jets. This is not a good idea. This is real. This is real. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kristin Kellen 22:14

But to see some of them who are flourishing as young adults, yeah. I mean, there are few greater joys that I and I'm a professor, I get to see graduation twice a year. There are few greater joys than seeing young people that the Lord has is doing work in their life. Y'all know this. Yeah. Right. And to see them grow and flourish and to feel like a proud parent. Yeah. And just praise the Lord for his gifts of grace in them. Um, and to get the privilege to be a piece of that. I look back on my own experience with my own youth minister. Her name is Emily. Um, so pivotal in my life. Um, and I think, man, what what a gift she was to me in that season. Yeah. And I bet you she never thought of it that way.

Zac Workun 22:58

She probably saw it as a series of weeks that that Kristen was in the ministry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kristin Kellen 23:04

Um, but she uh so meaningful in my life. Even in that season, be careful how I say this, but in a very different way than my parents are right on here. So very meaningful. Uh, but just loving me and supporting me and showing me what a godly woman looks like.

Speaker 1 23:18

That's awesome.

Kristin Kellen 23:18

And spurring me on towards education. And so you all, youth ministers, have a pivotal job to play in this season where teenagers often don't want to hear what their parents have to say. Yeah. But you can say it in a way that's the exact same as mom and dad, and they will listen to you as a mentor. That's right. Take advantage of it.

Zac Workun 23:36

Like, so well, that that was kind of my last question for you is um not all of us have the background or the education or training, but so many of us are working with teenagers that are overwhelmed.

Presence, Listening, And Wise Referrals

Zac Workun 23:49

And you do the back half of the book is like reading through a case study of students throughout the years that were facing various issues at heightened levels. But for those of us that are not certified counselors, for those of us that not have not even had counseling training outside of maybe a course or two, yeah. What what would you give as an encouragement? Like what would what would what would be some like some words of wisdom or encouragement of like, even if you are not uh CPE, like what what what what can we do? What can we do?

Kristin Kellen 24:18

No, it don't don't underestimate the value of presence and listening and understanding and and encouragement. That's 80% of what counseling is. Okay. It's just being present, right? You look at the book of Job and we're like, Job, your friends were great until they opened their mouths. They would just kept sick. You know? But that that week where they came and they saw him and they grieved with him and they bore his burdens. Yeah. Right? That was that's so meaningful. And you can do that, you can be present. Um, I hope that a book like Counseling Teens gives you uh words and a framework, if nothing else, to say this is something I can do versus I need to connect them with another member of the care team. Can I say it that way intentionally?

Speaker 1 24:59

Yeah, yeah.

Kristin Kellen 25:00

Because some pastors or ministry leaders will hand people off to a counselor. And we were made for community, right? And so you can be the spiritual shepherd and leader that is working with a counselor, a nutritionist, or a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Be part of that team.

Zac Workun 25:15

Yes, yes.

Kristin Kellen 25:16

Love them well, see them well, be present with them. You will accomplish more in that than you think. Uh, and the Lord has placed you in that position and ordained it on purpose. Don't don't neglect it, don't push it off and thinking you're not qualified. He he made you there. He put you there. So good. Use it. That's so good.

Zac Workun 25:34

Well, Kristen, thank you so much. The book is counseling teens. Dr. Kellen, thanks for being with us. Yeah, it was a joy. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you back next week.