Hopefully you’ll find this post to be as humorous and stereotypical as I did about what’s going on in the minds of our teenagers. Last Wednesday wrapped up a discussion series we were doing at Bethel. I asked the students to write down what they would like to discuss over the next 3 weeks we’re holding FUEL. One of the girls made me a list of all the written responses, and I just had to share them!!
By the way, the decision was made to have student-led Bible studies over the next few weeks instead of doing anything from this list.
So here’s what teenagers want to study/discuss in youth gatherings (I’m typing just as they were written):
- Sex b4 marriage
- God
- Book of James
- 2 Kings 8 (my note: Where in the world did this come from??!!!)
- Book of Revelation
- Is Satan a boy or girl?
- Heaven vs. Hell
- Sex b4 marriage
- Sex b4 marriage
- Sex b4 marriage
- Creation v. Evolution
- Satan
Kind of comical isn’t it? So now I know what the youth at my church like to discuss- sex and Satan. Great….
2nd Kings 8 sounds interesting. . . I looked it up and I have to say that I have probably never had an in-depth study of that section.
Well, I can’t say I’m surprised by most of what’s on the list. I would hope that, at some point in the future, you would consider having discussions on these topics, especially sex b4 marriage and Satan. A lot of times topics Youth want to discuss are those that don’t get talked about at home, or in the church. But where better to hear about God’s perspective than in the church from someone the Youth respect? I would hope you would see this as an opportunity to teach and share, rather than push it aside and ignore it as the church so often has in the past. (I’ll probably be in the minority with these opinions but I’ve always enjoyed the more controversial subjects)
Thanks for the comments Bev & Russ. Russ- I agree that these topics can’t be pushed aside. The Bible talks about them, so we have to pay some attention to them. In the last discussion series we just finished, we did discuss these two issues. I think that’s why they were written down again- because we weren’t able to answer all questions in the time we had in one night. So they want more on that topic. We actually have some interesting drawings of Satan up on our wall in the youth room right now!
On these issues- if teens are only learning about them in church and not at home, we’re in trouble. Parents are the main people responsible for the spiritual upbringing of their children- not a pastor. So we have to work together to make sure our kids are understanding Biblical perspectives to these and other issues.