HOW TO DRUGPROOOF YOUR CHURCH KIDS
What the pastor can do to help.
Stephen Arterburn
January 1, 1991
I received a call from my pastor, requesting my help. He had spotted a young girl on a curb near the local high school. She was in tears and smelled more like a skid row bum than a 16-year-old from his church. He took her to his office, but he didn't know what to do next. He would have called her parents, but she begged him not to. I hurried over.
When I arrived I found an alert, petite girl, weighing approximately one hundred pounds. I asked her what had happened. She and two other friends had started drinking that morning around 8. She had consumed a pint of whiskey and half a bottle of vodka flavored with peppermint-all of this within four hours. For a girl of her size to consume that much alcohol in that short of time and continue to be alert meant only one thing: she was a full-blown adolescent alcoholic.
As I've worked with chemically addicted youth, I've discovered this is not an unusual scenario. When a drug or alcohol problem arises, people turn to a pastor more frequently than to any other professional. That places pastors at a pivotal point in the life of the addict and the addict's family.
I've also found that pastors who invest even a small portion of their time in rescuing kids from drugs have a major impact, not only on these youth, but on their community as well.
It Won't Happen Here
Still, many pastors hesitate to get involved in this issue. Some don't think the problem affects their youth; others believe prayer alone is the cure. Let's look at these two issues before we consider what, in fact, pastors can do to help.
The problem doesn't affect our church. While working on the book Drug Proof Your Kids, I came across a survey that showed that 92 percent of all pastors felt alcohol and drugs were a problem in ...
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