Throughout our conversation at a local coffee shop, Crystal scribbled notes on a sheet of paper. She had asked me to meet and talk through some questions she needed to ask about God, and life as a Christian, and the workings of our church community. When we finished, she looked up with a surprised expression. “Now I have more questions than when we started!”
“Good,” I answered, “that’s what I hoped would happen.”
Any time my students go home after some interaction with me, I want them to know the answer to any question they asked is more complex than I can explain in one encounter. Along with my teaching about a part of the Bible, I want them to have a reason to return to that text again later, seeking more insight. In the Episcopal Church, the denomination in which I serve as a youth minister, there’s a prayer we say to thank God for the gift of Scripture. In this prayer, we ask for the ability and discipline to “hear, mark, learn and inwardly digest” the message of the Bible.
When I hear this prayer, the image that jumps to mind is of someone sitting down to enjoy a particularly great meal. Food that is made from quality ingredients and carefully prepared by a skilled chef deserves close attention during an extended period of time. Formal meals throughout the world take hours. Each course has its own silverware and presentation, and in between the diners clear their palates with water or fruit. This approach to meals ensures that the flavor of each dish will be fully enjoyed and that the dinner itself will be an experience that benefits not only the physical body by providing nutrients, but serves the whole person by providing space and time to be dedicated to just one thing.
Planning lessons for our youth groups, we often mine Scripture for the powerful or startling idea for this week’s message. This can shortchange students in several ways. Making points too simple masks the richness and complexity of God’s Word. Teaching in sound bites risks presenting Scripture as a simple rulebook rather than the unfolding story of God’s interaction with the world in which we are characters. If we make it seem as if youth leaders have Scripture all figured out, we leave our students little incentive to wrestle with it themselves.
Effective teaching about the Bible cultivates curiosity and an eagerness to return to the text. To develop this eagerness, our teaching in youth ministry about Scripture should consistently make several overarching points, in addition to presenting specific action items.
First, our students need to know the Bible’s stories and principles answer questions teenagers already are asking. They need to know to open Scripture when they have questions about life, and they need practice at finding the most useful places to look. Next, students should hear that Scripture contains answers to the questions they will be asking at later stages in their lives. Youth ministries should guide students to begin grappling with questions about college, marriage, parenthood and old age—not expecting them to develop definitive answers to those questions today, but to plan to incorporate God’s guidance into those discussions later. Finally, students need to be aware of the themes that run through the entire Bible and how they play out as universal human experiences, not just stories from long ago. When I speak about this, I divide Scripture into four thematic parts: creation (God makes the world out of love), brokenness (humans fall short of a perfect relationship with God and become subject to sin, evil and death), promise (God reminds people the way things are now is not the way they will remain), and restoration (through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, God begins the process that ultimately will lead to a kingdom restored to perfection under God’s direct rule). Revealing themes such as these help students to recognize how the stories in Scripture, which often feature characters with whom we’re unfamiliar (i.e., shepherds, fishermen and kings) correlate to the stories of our lives—stories about friendship, betrayal, service and looking for the right things to do. To cultivate this kind of teaching in youth ministry, several practical steps will help.
Focus teaching time around questions, not just answers. Students definitely need clear advice from Scripture, and there is plenty of it; but sending students home sometimes with questions such as, “What if?” and, “How do you see this story happening today?” enables Scripture to fill their minds between this week’s meeting and the next. (As a reminder, though, students have short attention spans. They will need reminders of the questions you want them to ponder.)
Return to Scripture texts over time, using different perspectives to analyze and teach. Paul said that some Christian teaching is “milk” (easily digested) and other teaching is “meat” (requiring careful chewing). At different times in students’ lives (and in our own), any Scripture text can be both. Reading a text once builds a foundation for reading it again as life experience, faith growth and world events inspire different questions and ways to apply what the Bible teaches.
Teach using larger chunks of Scripture, rather than individual verses. Instead of a sentence or two, read a chapter. Challenge students to read a whole book of the Bible between one youth group meeting and the next. The Gospel of Mark has 14 chapters; if students read two a day, that’s a week’s reading; and they will come back to the group with a sense of the entire story of Jesus’ life. Many of the books of the New Testament are much shorter, and reading an entire letter, (Galatians, for example—a personal favorite!) sets up the problem the author is writing about, the understanding or corrected practice that will solve that problem, and what the results will look like. On days when you teach from smaller portions of the Bible story, place them in context by telling students what comes before or after the story you present.
Maintain a trusted system to collect students’ questions. Collecting questions and returning to them later allows youth ministers to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out,” showing that we wrestle with and wonder about God’s Word ourselves. In my current congregation, our method for collecting questions is the fishbowl, a container filled with pens and slips of paper that we keep available at every event. When a student’s question is a little off-topic or requires some research to answer, we write it down, place it in the fishbowl and answer later.
Talk about your own sense of wonder when you read Scripture. Don’t make it sound as if you’ve already squeezed all the meaning out of a Bible story. If you present your lesson in a way that makes students think there is only one way to look at it, they won’t go back to it. If you bring in your unanswered (and unanswerable) questions, you make a safe space for students to ask their own.
The practice of lectio divina, or holy reading developed in monastic communities as a way of focusing a monk’s thoughts on Scripture, searching for its meaning and recognizing the ways in which this encounter’s thoughts and questions about the text were different from the previous time each monk had read it. Each period of holy reading has four parts. In the first part, lectio, the reader reads the text several times, slowly and carefully. When I lead lectio divina with students, I use the first reading to identify and define unfamiliar words and make sure everyone is familiar with the events of the story. This first phase is also the time to notice specific words or phrases that catch each reader’s attention, writing them down if that will help to recall them during the rest of the process.
In meditatio, the second part, the reader reflects on the meaning of the entire passage or one of its words. In group experiences, the second phase of lectio is dedicated to identifying questions about the text and talking about them together. The third phase, oratio, is a time for prayer. During this time, individually or with the group, students identify how the Scripture passage informs, guides and challenges our habits in daily life. The fourth phase, contemplatio, is focused on stillness. The first three phases of lectio divina can be emotionally intense, and the rest period at the end allows for remembering and celebrating the peace and rest Jesus provides for His followers. Taking notes, by yourself or with students, allows you to see how the words that jump out and the questions you ask develop in time.
Martin Luther wrote, “The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it catches me.” This kind of experience with Scripture is not passive absorption but engagement and struggle with something we can’t fully understand but are eager to explore anyway. That’s the kind of experience I want to send home with my students.
