One June evening, I found myself sitting around a campire next to 14-year-old Joshua. He asked if I liked Star Wars.
I said yes. He grinned.
He asked, “What era is your favorite?”
Uh-oh. While I love the movies – the original 3 movies, that is -, I didn’t know anything about the books or the eras or much about the Star Wars mythology. He began unpacking the grand epic of the Star Wars universe, a mythical struggle between good and evil.
I realized I had a very superficial understanding of Star Wars.
Similarly, many Christians have a very superficial understanding of the Bible, which is also an epic and supernatural struggle between good and evil. But, it’s more amazing because unlike Star Wars, the Bible is true. If you have the eyes to see, it’s more awesome than any other story you’ve ever heard.
Why? Because the Bible also says God’s supernatural plan to defeat evil involves you!
Youth Curriculum
If God is good, then why is there so much suffering?
When viewed through the supernatural worldview of the biblical writers, the Bible presents a coherent solution to this question, while inviting us to participate in God’s solution to set the world to rights again.
This 7-part series is designed as a youth group curriculum primarily for high school students and older.
It is appropriate for youth groups, homeschool groups, and environments where there’s a desire to understand your part in God’s supernatural plan.
The series attempts to equip all Christian students with a mindset that makes sense of the world they live in.
This course involves a teaching, small group discussion and Holy Spirit ministry.
Teaching
Leaders can teach the material presented in the Leader workbook or you can show the video lessons (below). I do recommend you teach this in person, however, because I’m not pleased with the video presentations at all. Nonetheless, each video is brief – 15 to 20 minutes, and the lesson really flies. Teens like to keep it short, after all.
Small Group Discussion
After the lesson, student discussion or journaling is recommended. The questions are designed to challenge the students. The point of the questions isn’t to answer them all, but to help the students chew on the material.
The questions are Biblically Thoughtful, Culturally Relevant, and Spiritually Powerful.
- Biblically Thoughtful – This workbook examines the lesson through challenging questions related to scripture.
- Culturally Relevant – Reading the Bible supernaturally lends itself very well to the experiences and challenges students face today. These questions help apply the lesson to how they think about life.
- Spiritually Powerful –What we learn sometimes demands an opportunity to respond. This may include a time of worship, but certainly, it should include an opportunity for students to engage in Holy Spirit-led ministry. This is when we allow God to minister to our needs. To be successful, it’s important we give the Spirit of Jesus freedom to minister to the students and help the students learn to engage in prayer ministry.
Workbooks
Download the The Leader Guide
Download the Student Workbook
Videos
I teach through all seven lessons in this series.
Slides
A PDF of the slides can be downloaded here.
You can download Powerpoint versions here.
Freely given
I’m offering this series to you at no cost. If you’d like to offer a contribution, visit my PayPal account.
During my years as a volunteer youth minister, I learned that many teenagers already have something of a supernatural worldview already. Their worldview is crafted by the monism in movies, television shows, novels, and even their own experiences.
Students are having supernatural experiences more frequently than most would imagine. They encounter spirits, play with Ouija and other spirit boards, flirt with witchcraft and magic cards, examine their horoscopes, and much more. If their churches don’t equip them with a truthful way to think about these experiences, who will?
As I tested these lessons on actual teenagers, they became so engrossed in God’s story that they brought their friends, some nonbelievers and some from other churches. “You have got to hear this. It makes so much sense!” Texts, Tweets and Instagram posts flew around about being #mindblown at youth group. I’ve never been such excitement about youth lessons before.
We didn’t need gimmicks to attract students to our youth group: we simply presented the Bible unfiltered by tradition and denominations and allowed the Holy Spirit to minister to their needs.
I don’t promise that this series will produce the same fruit in your students.
But it might.
Either way, the point remains the same: to equip all Christian students with a mindset that makes sense of the world they live in. The Bible does this, if taught from the worldview of the biblical writers.
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