Why we talk about S-E-X

There has been some controversy lately surrounding our High School youth group, that the group talks about sex. We do.

However, we do not discuss it every week or even every month. We have a godly curriculum that we use once a year. That being said....we do our best to answer teens questions that come up. If its a question asked with respect and a genuine desire for knowledge, we will do our best to answer it. There are a few reasons for this:

1. I (along with all the small group leaders) have done my best in the last 3 years to create a safe environment where teens can be heard and understood. They ask many questions about many things....marriage, divorce, godly living, drugs, relationships and yes, sex. As youth leaders, we are not trying to replace parental discussion, but to help reinforce it. Research shows that parents/guardians are the number one resource of information for most children and teens. We know, love and respect that fact. We only desire to reinforce ideas of abstinence, healthy dating relationships, etc.

2. As a mom myself, I agree with the belief that conversations of sexual nature should be held at home. As a Director of Jr&Sr High Ministries, I have learned that teens sometimes have questions they are too embarassed to ask their parents. As a mom, I hope that my children will have godly, trustworthy and honest adults to talk to about the things that they feel they cannot ask me or dad. That is our desire at our youth group....to provide godly, biblical principles to every facet of these teens lives, including sex and dating. We also have teens whose parents are not around or who won't discuss sex with them. I have told these teens over and over again that I would much rather they ask their small group leader rather than Google it (a VERY bad idea) or ask their friends (which are not good resources for sex). We do not want them to be misinformed or lied to about these things that matter to them.

Dr James Dobson had a letter written to him after a young girl saw him discussing teen sex when he was a guest on a panel about abstinece versus safe sex education. This was the letter: "This has been on my mind for a long time. I've heard that if you have sex during your period you won't get pregnet (sic). If not, I have a problem, I'm only 11. signed Really Worried".
This little girl was only 11 and had already fallen victim to all the misinformation that is out there about sex. We do not want our teens to be misinformed and they are fed misinformation from so many different sources that it can become extremely confusing to know what to believe. We offer them Gods' truth.

3. Statistically speaking, 47% of teens are sexually active, most statisticians believe that the number may be higher because there is still a social stigma surrounding premarital sex, so girls especially, tend to lie about being sexually active. The number increases with age, 62% of 12th graders report being sexually active compared with 33% of 9th graders. Compared to older adults, teens are at higher risk for contracting STDs due to lack of regular health care and being physiologically more susceptible to infection. 25% of teens contract an STD every year. An estimated half of all new reported HIV cases yearly are in people under 25. 50% of sexually active youth will contract an STD before age 25. 40% of older adolescents incorrectly believe that the birth control pill prevents STDs and HIV. Some teens, including those that have recieved abstinence education, consider oral and anal sex to be abstinent behaviors and do not realize these behaviors present risks of STD transmission. There are currently 20 STDs considered to be at epidemic levels in the U.S., many of them incurable. There are STDs, such as HPV, herpes, and genital warts (all of which are incurable) that can be transmitted even with condom use. It is estimated that 90% of cervical cancer cases are caused by HPV, which cannot be erradicated once it's in the body. Some STDs, such as syphllis and chlamydia can lead to infertility, especially in girls. 31% of teen girls will become pregnant at least once before the age of 20. 27% of teen pregnancies end in abortion every year. The United States has the highest teen pregancy and birth rate in the Western industrialized world. (all statistics were pulled from the Kaiser Family Foundation, SADD and the Guttmacher Research Institute)

These statistics are scary and give even more reason to promote and advocate abstinence, as well as making sure our teens are not misinformed about the dangers of premarital sex. There is no such thing as "safe sex" and all teens need to know that. That is why we talk about sex, to educate them, to reinforce abstinence and to respect their desire for biblical knowledge regarding sex.

That being said, we cannot always predict what question a teen is going to ask on any given Wednesday. Many times we redirect the conversation and ask the teen to bring it up privately with their small group leader. There are times (rarely), however, that we do address the question as a group.

I encourage any parent with questions or concerns to please, please, please contact me. I am more than happy to let you review our curriculum, to ask questions and share any concerns you have with me. We generally send home a flyer when we are close to starting our sex/dating curriculum and if you would like your child to not participate, that is perfectly ok. Our curriculum on sex deals only in biblical principles regarding purity, abstinence and healthy relationships. We do, however, answer questions about pornography, masturbation and homosexuality if they are brought up in the course of the curriculum. I realize that these are uncomfortable topics for most people and that many feel the church should not be discussing them. I say, why not the church? Where else will they get biblical, purity driven answers? I believe the church should be discussing these things and we will continue to do so.

I want to again reiterate the fact that this does not happen every week or even every month. Most of the times that kids are talking about sex, we shut it down. But we will answer honest, respectful questions.

In regard to the Jr High youth group, we do no sex curriculum. For 6th graders, we do a curriculum on building healthy friendships/relationships. For 7th and 8th graders, we focus on respecting the opposite sex, that God purposefully made men and women different, emotionally. And for the boys, we help them learn to deal with impure thoughts. All small groups are aged based and boys and girls are separate. We do answer their questions as well, age appropriately. We are not interested in giving sex education and we don't. Some girls last year had questions about teen preganacy and we answered them age appropriately and biblically.

We do respect the different places all of our youth (Jr&Sr High) are in and base our curriculum and answers around their different ages and needs.

I hope that this helps clear up some of the "controversy" and again invite any one with questions to please contact me at jami@harrisonlegacy.com or 513-266-1017.