On Wednesday night we started something new in the teen class. We will be studying Jude but with a twist. There is going to be very little lecturing going on and a lot more hands on activities. I was reading in The Gospel Advocate Magazine a while back about Youth Ministry and got, what I thought to be a great idea. The author was writing to the fact that the youth does not know how to read the bible and understand it for themselves.
I feel this to be true, especially for most of the kids in the youth group I work with.
If I were to ask most of them to prepare a lesson on the book of Jude they might do a decent job of the basics but have no idea how to get at the meat of the text; and why should they, they don’t know how and have never been taught how.
The idea I got from GA was to write a thank you note to the author of one of the NT writers for writing their church. In this case we will be writing a thank you note to Jude for writing us. I think it will not only give them a better understanding of what the letter is talking about, but also help them grasp the idea that Jude was a real person who really wrote a letter and it has meaning today. Yes Jude is a tough book but that just means there will be plenty of meat for the group to dig into.
Also, last night, and probably for one or two more Wednesday nights, we will be looking at how to use some of the resources materials available to them to get at the meat of the Word. Last night I showed them how to use an Interlinear Bible with a Greek Lexicon, Naves topical Bible, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, Vine’s Bible Dictionary, and a couple of commentaries. Yes, I know, it sounds like a load of fun for a bunch of teens on a Wednesday night but they shouldn’t wait until collage to learn how to read the bible for them selves. Plus I’m not so sure if I trust most of today’s “Christian” Universities to teach impressionable students how to read the bible.
I got a phone call from a girl who used to attend here who is now in collage. She goes to a private but non Christian school. She told me she was not ready for what she is now facing. She had no idea there were so many different ways of believing the bible and often times finds she has no answer to the questions being posed to her. She said, for instance, she never knew why people always talking about instrumental music and never really understood why it was such a big deal. After being at collage a couple of weeks she sees that it wasn’t the church that was making it a big deal but everyone else and that her teachers in bible class were just trying to prepare her for the up coming challenges.
Far too often this is the case with our young people. They find out too late that what they were being taught really does matter.
So, on Sunday morning in the High School class, we will be studying about Christian evidences and look at many of the challenges they will be facing in the very near future when they leave home to go off to collage. I am excited about the study and hope the teens really grasp the urgency of the matter. One of the scary things to me is that at the end of the summer most of the teens that are going to collage will be going to Harding or Freed instead of a public school. You see at a public school you know exactly what you are getting but at Harding or Freed there may be a sense of security that could lead to destruction.
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