Last September, we started a new Year-7 after-school cell group, rather enthusiastically called Adventure Time. The 11 members of the group were issued with a Bible reading challenge, complete with ‘homework’. In an age of short attention spans and constant multimedia bombardment, that probably sounds like the kind of move to get you instantly fired on The Apprentice. However, it’s drawn an unprecedented level of enthusiasm and commitment from our young people.
The Community Bible Experience presents the New Testament (and other parts of the Bible) as continuous prose – no chapters or verses, columns, small print or thin paper. Churches aim to read the whole book and discuss it together over the course of eight weeks. There’s a shorter version – only consisting of Luke and Acts – and we aimed for our group to read it over three months while the adults were simultaneously reading the full version.
We set them a number of pages to read at home each week (yes, pages not verses!) and, despite their other extra-curricular activities and an unending mountain of homework, all of them read it almost every week and enjoyed doing so. Two even read the entire book more than once, because they got carried away!
Each Friday, after a short game and the obligatory youth club snack, we reread a page of what they’d read in the previous week. That was about as far as the leaders planned for the session – the floor was now open for anyone to ask a question or to make a comment about the passage we’d read. Nothing was too big or too small to ask – anything from the meaning of a word to the meaning of life was open to discussion.
In our second week, Jesus’ temptation in the desert led to a flurry of questions about the origins and activity of the devil, which had me desperately racking my brains and then reaching for the theology books as soon as I got home! But that was just the start. What actually are angels? Were children and teenagers among the 72 that Jesus sent out? Why are Christians afraid of death if they believe in heaven? If we had set out a list of points to make each week, I really doubt many, if any, of these would have been explored. Like it or not, the way we as leaders view the Bible is often different from how it’s viewed by young people. Our questions are different. The things we find weird are different. And we need to take that into account.
By letting the young people take the lead and ask the questions, we had to surrender control of the session and that, quite frankly, can be more than a little terrifying. But we were also allowing them to discuss things they really need answers to, right now. This shows that we’re comfortable discussing anything and that nothing is off limits – even if we have to admit we don’t know something – and that opens up a level of trust that doesn’t always happen if it’s a leader dictating the course of the session.
This is not to say that we should let the young people ask all of the questions all of the time. Guided discussion and teaching is so important in getting to those issues that are at the centre of our faith, or those that young people just don’t think about. But just once in a while, try letting your group determine what you discuss. You might just be surprised with what they’re thinking about…
Charlotte Peckett is an intern at St Paul’s Finchley.