Own Your Faith - Class #1

This was a very interesting class indeed. I was expecting more students but only had three, which, in terms of any ministry or class just starting out that is pretty much voluntary (with teens everything in church is voluntary when you think about it), is good. I had a class that was ready to learn and apparently was excited that I was teaching them. I found this out later.

Dayvon, Chris, and Bridgette had notebooks and pens, although Dayvon forgot his Bible. He had a good excuse because his mom had just picked him up from football practice at his high school and had forgotten it at home en route to church. After getting the group settled in, we started talking about what the class would look like as the weeks progressed, what I was requiring, and what I would try to do to keep them engaged.

And then we jumped right into Genesis and the Pentateuch. This class is a Survey class as I said before so I gave them a little background but not much. Really I just wanted to get them reading and dialoguing about what we were seeing right away. Chris chimed in on pretty much every question, Dayvon listened and at times answered questions, and Bridgette (being the only girl) kind of stayed in reserve mode. But it was all good. It was just the first day, and even I was beginning to wonder which way I should go.

I think the first class was really just a day to see how the kids thought about Scripture and God and faith. I asked a pointed question like the others I was posing through our time together about what it means to be a Christian, what it means to believe in Christ, what it means to be saved. And the surprising thing for me after I asked was the pervasive silence.

They simply didn't know, and at that moment, I realized that for all the calisthenics of faith that we performed at our church during worship services and events, these kids still didn't really know why we were there or why the "grown-ups" were so crazily attached to this thing called "church." Did we lose them somewhere? In the midst of our grapplings with Christianity did we lose our kids at that last bend in the road and didn't realize it? Were we really not paying close enough attention?

Oops.

The kids in my class are not what we in the Christian theological world like to call the "un-churched." These kids come to church every Sunday with their parents and have been for a long time. But somehow in the midst of our at times misguided efforts to engage them in the faith, we have missed the point of simply stating to them what our faith is, what constitutes our faith, what makes us faithful to the cause.

I knew then what the class had to be for them. It had to be more than hooplah or fanfare. I had been worried that they were bored with all the questions and Bible-reading we were doing even on the first day. But that was the problem - us "grown-ups" being worried that they needed to be physically entertained and not spiritually taught and fed. By nature I am not a hype, jump-around-run-around-give-God-praise-and-when-it's-all-over-we'll-read-a-verse-teacher. I am the type of person that wants to present information that will get kids talking and thinking and hopefully believing.

So this first night, I knew, even though I only had three kids the direction we would need to go. We needed a genesis - a beginning place, a launching place to start. We would start to play games; I would ask questions. We would read the Word with more deliberate intention; I would pry into their heads so they would know for themselves what this faith thing is all about. If it is something they are supposed to be able to own, they have to be confident in their ability to know what they believe. And in the end they would know that God's Word can answer the issues that arise in their lives and it would direct their paths as it has so consistently directed mine.

So we start with (a) Genesis...