In my last article we considered the importance of considering Scripture as a dynamic where our young people encounter God. It is not primarily about God or about them, but about how God communicates with them. If it were just about God, then it would be a lot longer! How does that affect our ‘Bible talks’?
I am going to call this preaching. I think we lose something in calling them ‘Bible talks’ – we lose the sense of encountering God when we open the Word of God with young people. We therefore need to move beyond the thought that we are just telling young people what the Bible says. No-one comes to Scripture in a vacuum, with no previous experiences, sufferings, troubles, or doubts. Nor do teenagers. There are hundreds of questions they will be looking for answers for, and hundreds of things they think you are wrong about!
The best preaching I have come across has come from people who genuinely cared about me, I could sense it in their preaching. The same is true for preaching in our youth groups: it must be shaped by an understanding of the lives of those present. It is in walking with them through their struggles that we know how to help them hear God’s voice well. When my preaching has not landed, it is always because there has been something going on that I was unaware of. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but often not.
The nature of preaching is that it does not invite disagreement. This is understandable but can also be a problem with teenagers. It is far better that they feel able to say they disagree (and you can work through it with them) than that they keep their doubts to themselves but smile and nod and walk away. Perhaps there is a place for allowing and inviting disagreement and doubts. They will be present, but they may be unspoken.
It may be that we want our follow up groups to deal with these. In which case, we need to stop asking the ‘what does verse seven say?’ questions! We need to think more carefully about the wording of our questions to allow dissent.
What would happen in your youth group if you said something obviously untrue? Try it! If it’s a lovely middle-class group, then maybe they are too polite. Maybe they need spoken permission to speak out. There should be an unruly-ness about our groups where they do not sit quietly and passively listening, but that they interrupt and object and show a holy disruption which we know they are capable of!
