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Before You Begin

ESSENTIAL READING

You need to read through the following section to get a good overview of the course and how to run it. There’s a fair amount of preparation involved for each week, some more than others, but I hope that if you catch a vision of the overall experience then you’ll feel that it’s worth investing the time in getting everything ready.

SPACE FOR YOU TO ENGAGE WITH THE STORY

At the start of each session, there’s a chance for you to engage with the biblical story. There’s a Bible passage to read, some questions to think about, sometimes something to do, a chance to pause and reflect. I hope that communicating this amazing story will impact you too – that you’ll get caught up in the big picture and have a fresh vision for your place in the ongoing story of God’s dealings with humanity. Spend some time with God and with what he wants to say to you from his story. Then you can move on to pray for your group and what they will get from the session.

EDUCATIONAL APPROACH

What was the last new thing that you learned and how did you learn it? There’s an old and well-known saying attributed to Confucius that goes ‘I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.’ Is that true in your experience?

Often when we’re communicating Christian truth, we use lots of words and expect our audience to listen to them and take them all in. And while there’s a time and a place for lectures, sermons, talks and motivational speeches, youth group sessions are not usually it. Young people are not at school - they want to have fun, be engaged and involved, express their opinions and be caught up in what is going on.

So this course takes a more experiential approach to learning. Each week, it provides opportunities for young people to do things – to explore, think, interact and feel. They get stuck into activity, and then later in the session they’ll reflect on what they did and what they have learned from it.

For example, the aim of Session Seven – Communication is for young people to understand the role of the prophets in calling the people of Israel back to God. You could do that through an explanation, but I suggest you do it through an experience that will make it so much more real.

I suggest that you set up six CD players in a room all playing different tracks. (Don’t worry about the practical side for the time being – all is explained in the session along with a different way of getting the same effect!) Each of those tracks has instructions telling young people to do different activities – solving puzzles, making you a thank you card, singing some carols and so on. They spend some time listening to all the different tracks and choosing which one they want to listen to. That experience is a bit like the different voices clamouring for the attention and allegiance of the people of Israel (and of us!). The prophets speak out in the midst of the competing messages of the culture – will the people listen to them and come back to God? Having had the experience, young people will understand more of why the prophets were often unpopular, and why it was necessary for them to do that job in the first place.

Some of the activities are open-ended – not everyone will draw the same conclusions but that’s fine. If young people aren’t used to these kinds of activities, they may need a bit of encouragement to engage with them rather than staying aloof.

There will be a fair amount of explaining to do as well - more about that later. But don’t feel you have to explain absolutely everything, or get young people to rationalise what they have experienced. Sometimes we need time to mull over our experiences, to live with the mystery and the questions until we reach our own conclusions – that eureka moment when the penny drops and you see things far more clearly for yourself. Pray that God will speak to your group throughout the whole course and reveal his truth and presence to them.

This approach sometimes requires more work from the leaders, but it’s worth it because it provides a rich learning environment and some great memories and shared experiences for the group.

SIZE OF GROUP

As you’re reading through the session plan, think through how your group will interact with the activities and materials. You may want to double up materials if you have a large group. For example, in session one, you may want to create two trees for the response time if one will get too crowded.

TELLING THE STORY

These sections connect the activities that the group have done to the biblical narrative. There’s a fair amount of information to get across and it needs to be done well. Take time to learn what you need to communicate. It’s fine to make bullet-point notes to speak from, but don’t be tempted to read out the ‘script’ in these notes – it will lose all impact. You need to be able to make eye-contact with your group, to be a real story-teller that engages them.

If your group has some Bible knowledge, then you may want to approach the ‘telling the story’ sessions differently – asking them what they know already and how it all connects together rather than just talking at them.

READING THE BIBLE

A suggestion is made each week for a section of text that you can read from the Bible to the group. Think through the best way to approach this with your group. If possible, give them Bibles and show them where to find the text so that they know how to look up passages, and can see where in the book the part of the story they are studying comes.

If you can, try to use a version that suits the academic standard of your group. Versions like the Contemporary English Version (CEV) or the New International Reader’s Version (NIRV) are easier to read. You can get an Urban Saints branded version of the CEV which would make a wonderful gift for the members of your group linked to this course. Contact Urban Saints for details, either through the web site, www.urbansaints.org, or calling the Support Centre on 01582 589850. Try to use an inclusive language version which refers to ‘people’ rather ‘men’ when it means all of humanity. Both the CEV and NIRV are inclusive language. You may be able to do the mental gymnastics necessary to remind yourself that ‘men’ means everyone, but language has changed and young people, particularly girls, may find this alien and a barrier to engaging with the text.

If you need to use an older version because that’s what’s available, you may want to print out for some sessions a more modern translation of the text you’re looking at from a website such as www.biblegateway.com. But still hand out the Bibles to get the young people used to handling them physically.

Be aware of how young people are responding to this. Some will be intrigued by handling the Bibles and will enjoy looking up and reading passages. Sometimes, though, it can take time to get everyone organised and on the right page. From time to time, you may like to just have one Bible that you hand to someone to read, or that you read from to the group.

KEEPING A RECORD

You may like to take photos of the activities each week to build up a record of what the group has experienced together. These images will serve as a useful trigger to the group to remind them of what they have experienced and learned. You can also show them in the final session as a way of reviewing the whole course. If you are working with a team of volunteers, you could give one of them the job for taking photos each week. Or a teenager who finds it hard to engage in group activities may enjoy the responsibility of being the ‘official photographer’ and the task may provide a way for them to keep connected to the course and the group.

THINGS TO BE AWARE OF BEFORE YOU START

The course is designed to be done in weekly one-hour sessions. You can of course run one session over two weeks if you’d prefer to space out the programme or you can shorten the time taken to run each of the individual activities. The activities suggested could easily take one and a half hours, giving you a bit more space for discussion and reaction. There are some sessions that don’t follow this standard pattern and this list warns you in advance where things are a bit different.

  • Session three - Broken would benefit from being an hour and a half.
  • There’s an additional idea called ‘act like a prophet’ that will enhance Session seven – Communication if you have time to do it. See page 78 for more details. This idea needs to be done in some spare time one or two weeks before session seven. It is optional though.
  • Session eight – Challenge would really benefit from being longer even if it’s just 15 minutes.
  • Session ten - Life is a ‘treasure hunt’ that needs planning in advance. It takes place in the local area and will take longer than an hour. You’ll need permission slips from parents if you don’t already have a general one that allows you to take young people out and about. Because the treasure hunt needs to be tailored to your local area, this is the session that will take the most planning so do look at it in plenty of time. I have given you a format to follow and guidance for how to create your own treasure hunt. This will be a really enjoyable session for the group and I hope that you enjoy creating it!
  • Session eleven - Hope uses junk modelling in one of the activities. You need to collect boxes and packaging that could be used for this. Perhaps people in your church could help so tell them what you need in plenty of time. This session would also benefit from being longer than one hour.

BASIC MATERIALS

At the start of each session outline there’s a list of all the materials you’ll need. But you’ll also need some basic items that you should have on hand for every session. I suggest that you get one of those plastic storage boxes and collect together the things on this list. Then all you have to do is take your box to each session and keep it topped up when things run out.

  • Paper
  • Biros
  • Felt pens
  • Scissors
  • Glue sticks
  • Blu-tack
  • Sellotape
  • Black marker pens
  • Flipchart pens
  • Old newspaper to protect tables
  • Colour magazines
  • CD player and CDs of background/instrumental music to play during some of the activities
  • Bibles

SUGGESTED READING

There are hundreds of books about the Bible! Here are just two suggestions that have been instrumental in the development of this course. If you want to do some background reading, I recommend you start here.

The Drama of Scripture by Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen, SPCK, ISBN 0-281-05740-0

An excellent explanation of how the story of the Bible all hangs together, and how we can find our place in it.

The Bible Book – A user’s guide by Nick Page, Collins, ISBN 978-0-00-711967-7

A really useful handbook to the Bible to dip into. Full of accurate and interesting information, it demystifies the Bible, helps you get to grips with some of the difficult bits and explains how it all fits together.

OPTIONAL EXTRAS

Memory verses and journals

There is a huge diversity to be found in youth groups – in terms of age, maturity, Christian commitment, ability to concentrate, group dynamics, background Bible knowledge and lots more. I hope that you will be able to adapt this course to your group whatever it is like. I haven’t assumed much Bible knowledge at all so if the people in your group do have a level of Christian commitment or background knowledge you may like to use one or both of these ideas to build on what they already know and to encourage them to apply it to their own lives.

Each week there is a key verse highlighted in the session outline that could be used as a memory verse with the group. You could get people to find this in their Bibles, read it out together as a group, have a competition to see who can learn the most off by heart, get them to write it out each week – or whatever it takes for them to learn some of God’s word. This verse is given from the Contemporary English Version as that’s an easy version to read, to listen to and to memorise.

Each week there is an A5 handout that you can give to people at the end of the session. This summarises the part of the story covered in the session and gives them a few questions to think about during the week. You may like to get an A5 book as a journal for each group member. They can stick in the handouts each week and then use extra space to journal about their experiences and reflections. The handout includes the memory verse as a reference. If you’re not using this idea as well, you don’t need to refer to it. Young people can look it up and learn it if they are interested.

ANIMATED BIBLE STORY

To help the young people get a sense of the overall story, we’ve provided a flash animation that tells the story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Most sessions include a short segment from this flash animation as the story unfolds. This is available to watch and download from the Multimedia Resources page (Energize Subscribers Only).