How to write Bible study lessons for youth group

I got the idea for this blog topic from my friend Tim Schmoyer.  He offered up 100 blog post ideas for others to write about so I grabbed this one of the list.

I actually enjoy writing Bible study lessons for my high school small group.  It is a process I have been working on and refining for several years now.  When I was a full-time Youth Leader I was a huge proponent of writing lessons for 1 of my 2 weekly meetings with the teens.  This is the process I currently use that has become the most effective way I have ever led a Bible study.

A little over a year ago Greg Stier introduced me to the ALT-ernative teaching style which has since revolutionized the way I do lessons.  The idea is that you follow the ALT acronym: Ask, Listen, Teach.  You ask a question of the group to get discussion going, you listen the teens as they share their ideas and beliefs, and then you teach what God’s Word has to say about the topic.

ASK.  When my buddy Sam and I kicked this off in our small group we had each teen write 3-5 questions on a 3×5 card.  They simply needed to be spiritual questions that they desired answers to.  As we sorted through the cards we saw various types of questions: what is God like, why do bad things happen, how far is “too far,” what do I have to do to be saved, what’s the point of prayer, etc.  Each week we would rifle through our stack of questions and determine what we would study the following week.  We could have come up with spiritual questions on our own to kick-off discussion in the group, but found it was a great move to let the kids do this for us.  1) the questions were from the teens themselves so they spoke to their personal needs AND 2) they more readily engaged in conversation because they were their questions, not ours.

LISTEN.  This was sometimes the difficult part.  The temptation was to hear what teens said and jump all over it, but this only led to squashing the conversation before it ever started.  The awkward moments kicked in when we did ask questions that they didn’t immediately dive into and discuss.  This really requires you as the Youth Leader to stop and practice patients.  The other thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to agree with what the teens are saying but you want to cultivate an environment where they feel they can freely share their thoughts.  Sometimes you simply have to say things like, “Isn’t that interesting?” “Tell me more about what that means to you,”  “So what your saying is…” “Does anyone else agree or disagree?” “Why do you believe that?”  All of these questions encourage further discussion without affirming a particular view.

TEACH.  Each week I would actually get the kids to agree to the fact that we would dive into God’s Word to understand what it had to say about our question/discussion.  By getting them to agree to this part of the process, they were more engaged when we would read Scripture.  Also, because I had listened to them and heard them out they were more willing to hear me out.  You will have to be on your game and come prepared with multiple passages to go to.  When you throw out a big question like, “What are views of God?” you will get a variety of answers that might take you down different roads.  Depending on the conversation you might need to address God’s holiness, His forgiveness and love, the trinity, Jesus, the Creator, etc.  It can be a little messy, but your teens will love the rawness and authenticity.  If you get stuck, don’t lie or gloss over it.  Simply communicate that whatever point they have brought up is a great question that you don’t have the answer to and then commit together to find the answer in God’s Word.

Preparing lessons like this will be the easiest and most difficult thing you will ever do.  It’s easy from the standpoint that you won’t have to write a three point teaching outline, make fill-in-the-blank handouts for your teens, etc.  It will be more difficult in that you can’t always control where the conversation goes, you will have to be in the Word daily to have a stronger working knowledge of the text, and if you are working with volunteer leaders it will require more of them in the same way.

This is the most non-traditional approach I have ever taken to writing Bible study lessons for my teens but it has offered the most indepth discussions and incredible learning opportunities.  My teens have kept the discussions going outside of our meeting time and frequently reference previous conversations we’ve had much more readily and easily than any teaching outline they have ever been taught through.  I challeng you to give it a try and see what God does through your conversations.

D&W: a Chapter a Week

This week’s idea for going “Deep” in your Youth Ministry:

I love using curriculum when teaching my high school small (we just got done with Gospel Journey Maui).  Assuming that it’s theologically sound and allows you to discuss with your teens scripture and biblical truth like GJM, then it’s all good.  I have found an additional benefit to using curriculum is that it typically takes less prep time so it allows me to tend to other priorities in my ministry (and I know we all have seasons of ministry where we feel like we don’t quite have the time we’d like).  There are times where I find it necessary to take my kids deeper into God’s Word.

When I want to take my kids deeper, there’s nothing better than simply discussing a chapter of a book in the Bible each week.  A good friend of mine and co-laborer in Youth Ministry, Sam Holmes, is just now wrapping up the book of Romans with his small group.  Yes, I said Romans.  Jam packed with rich theology and deep truths, Sam and his teens have jumped in head first into this amazing book of the Bible and are unpacking and discussing it each week.  They have a deeper understanding of Christianity and their own faith as a result.

As I get ready for next fall when the school year kicks off I am thinking of diving into the book of Acts with my teens and exploring with them what the 1st century church was all about.  I want them to see and experience what it was like immediate following Christ’s resurrection when the first believers responded to the grace of God and what they were compelled to do with a new purpose and mission in life.  As we navigate through Acts, I will be teaching using the ALT-ernative teaching style from Dare 2 Share.  It allows the teens to ask questions, share ideas, and then dive deep into God’s Word.

For those of you who are already implementing this practice into your ministry setting, how is it going?  What have you studied?  How have your kids responded to reading a chapter a week?

For those of you who are doing something different with your teens to disciple them and get them growing deeper in God’s Word, share what your doing.  We’d love to hear other ideas here at Deep & Wide Youth Ministry!

HS Small Group 1/6/09

We kicked off the 2009 year with our small group ministry in 2 big ways this week:

1. The group reached the size & capacity this past fall where we felt confident splitting the group.  Sam has kept a Monday night group at his house and I have taken the small group “plant” and started a Tuesday night group tonight.
2. To help keep momentum going now that the groups are half this size they were, we began the Gospel Journey MAUI DVD-curriculum from Dare 2 Share!

We dove into our MAUI experience tonight in episode 1 of the curriculum which asks the question: “Is there a higher power?” which also led right into another BIG question in life, “How was all this created?”  It was a little slow going at first but the teens began to open up and share their thoughts and opinions about these questions and a variety of others related to this topic.

I was pleased with their willingness to respond and interact, but was a little burdened by a trend that was represented by most of the teens in the room – a reluctance for anyone to say that we can, in fact, know truth with any level of certainty.  These are not teens who don’t go to church or are living a life outside of a relationship with Jesus.  On the contrary, these are kids who know the Lord Jesus Christ, attend on a regular basis, and invite their friends with them.  Several of them felt that even in answering questions about creation vs. evolution or if is there a God or not that everyone can have an opinion but we can’t know with certainty.  At the core of this dilemna, the struggle concerning if there is absolute truth.

As we dialogued they began to see through scripture that we can know with confidence answers to these questions and more.  The good news in all of this: these teens are willing to wrestle with their faith and their doubts in a youth group setting and still seek out scripture as a source for answers.  To be honest, it was refreshing not to get the “Sunday School” and “Pat” answers to these questions we dealt with.  I feel like I can be a more effective Youth Leader having a realistic handle on where these kids are at and what they are going through.  The responsibility I now have is meeting these kids where they are at and helping them find answers to their questions.

Pray for me, Robbin, and Jake as we lead this group as well as the teens we have the opportunity to minister to: Steven, Andrea, Shawn, Brandon, Mason, Tyler, Stephanie, Riley, Marissa, Matt, Breanna, Michael, and the rest of the teens that will join us along this journey!

Best Christmas Ever!

This year’s Christmas has been the best ever for a variety of fun and sincere reasons.

This year was going to be our first Christmas wiht absolutely no family whatsoever, and we weren’t too excited about that.  Last year Neva’s family came up from Phoenix.  The year before that we spent it with my older half-brother and his family.  The year before that we were with my parents in South Carolina.  You get the idea…family, family, family.

So being alone in the island I call Colorado with our closest family a 12-hour car ride away and in most cases, on the other side of the United States from us, it was going to be our first Christmas just the 3 of us (plus the 1 on the way).   We were okay with the idea early on but the closer it go to Christmas the sadder we all seemed to get.  God must have known how much we were missing family because this year He gave us an incredible Christmas gift:  incredibly special moments with people here in Colorado that have become like family to us!

Sunday, December 21st:  We attended the Best Christmas Ever Party with 80 other people at the Kelly’s house, successfully hosted by middle daughter Bethany, along with David Mercer.  It was an absolute blast as it was an ugly sweater party and Neva and I went in matching pink sweaters (mine did not fit).  It was a festive way to usher in the Christmas week with so many families & friends.  Good times!

Tuesday, December 23rd:  We went over to the Bresina’s house and had a Christmas pizza party with them and the Stiers which allowed Jeremy and Christian to have a few early gifts and spend some fun time together.  We were blessed to have that time with them as our families have gotten closer and closer over this past year.  It’s special for me to see Christian have such a close friend in Jeremy knowing that they will get to grow up together (being a military brat and moving around so much that wasn’t something I got to experience – so I am glad my son does).  Tuesday night was a special night for our family!

Wednesday, December 24th:  After a day of activities at the church we headed over to the Kelly’s for a festive Christmas Eve dinner.  In addition to the Kelly’s, our good friends the Holmes were there and Christian again got to exchange gifts with his good buddy, Preston.  Neva and I were taken aback by surprise gifts we got from both the Holmes’ and the Kelly’s.  The gifts were a wonderful surprise, but what Neva and I realized was how blessed we are by such wonderful friends that might as well be family.

Now you can see why this has been the Best Christmas Ever!  Even though we thought we would be without family this year, God blessed us with 4 families that have become so close to us, I can no longer say that we don’t have family in Colorado.  The truth is, we have an incredible family in Colorado that God orchestrated and master-minded before we ever got to Colorado, let alone before the beginning of time.  May your Christmas with your family, whatever that looks like, be as blessed as ours was!

HS Small Group 12/22/08

Tonight was somewhat of a milestone in the life of our small group as we have maintained over 20 teens for about 6 consecutive weeks, ever since Dare 2 Share’s Invincible conference.  What was so momentous about this occasion?  It was the last night that our group would meet together as a single unit.  We have reached critical mass for my friend Sam’s living room in the mid-twenties.  So in a bitter-sweet move due to growth we are splitting the group and launching a second group on Tuesday nights. 

When we started the 2nd or 3rd week of September there were 13 teens.  We quickly shot up to the upper teens within the first month and by early November had over 20 teens a time or two.  Since D2S we have accumulated about 30 teens so as we launch in to two groups in the new year, each will have about 15 in them.  Part of the growth and momentum is due to the fact that we have seen 4 teens come to Christ over the past 3 months, 3 of them since the D2S conference!  I cannot wait to see what God will do in 2009 through these two groups.

Pray for both of our groups as we launch the new study, Gospel Journey MAUI in each of them.  I have no doubt that we will continue to see God change lives, stretch their faith, and more and more teens come to Christ not just through the Gospel being shared within our group, but by our teens on a daily basis.

Shred the Gnar!