For a little over a year now all of us involved with StudentLifeBibleStudy have been taking a real hard look at what we’ve been doing. We’ve listened to feedback from a number of you, both youth ministers and volunteer youth workers. We’ve continued to read up on trends and research related to the students with which we work. We’ve talked to the youth in our own churches. We’ve sat around in our offices, in meetings, at our events and even out at lunch and had countless conversations about what was going great with our Bible study as well our dreams for how we could make it even better.

In the last post I let you know about some early steps we took in this process of making it the best it can be. Remember? Those meetings I said we had where we basically imagined that our Bible study didn’t exist and brainstormed about what we’d want to do if we could make one? Well, if you don’t remember, be sure to read that post as well. For this post I wanted to take you another step further in how we got to where we are now. Here’s just a few of the things we’ve discovered in this process:

• StudentLifeBibleStudy already covered a good bit of what we thought was important. That was good news because it meant we had a good start already and that we hadn’t been wasting our time or your time (much less God’s time) for the past five years.

• The Bible really is as good as we think it is. We can literally spend the rest of our lives (and hopefully will) discovering the truth it contains and never get tired of it.

• Since that’s the case and we only have a limited amount of time with teenagers in youth groups, we’re going to relieve ourselves of the pressure to try to teach them absolutely everything. Remember they’ve got a whole life of following Christ ahead of them.

• For that reason then, we’re going to focus on making sure they’re prepared for that life. Our second question, to help us begin to narrow down our list became, “out of all of these Scriptures we could cover, what are most essential in providing a solid foundation as well as preparing students for lives beyond the youth group?”

• We still love doing this. As daunting as it can be at times, we’d have it no other way.

• Prayer… lots of prayer… is essential when trying to be discerning.

• The Holy Spirit really does fulfill his role in our lives and “guides us into all truth.”

• We think this is fun. Maybe that makes us weird, but we don’t dwell on that too much.

• We’re so glad that this isn’t just left up solely to us. We get the opportunity to work with so many of you in your ministry and to partner with so many great people committed to helping teenagers know Christ through His Word. And ultimately, God is the one changing lives, not us, obviously. And we thank Him for that fact every day because there’s no way we’d get it right.

And we just keep learning. Every day. And that’s the way it should be and just one of the things that hopefully distinguishes all of us at Student Life.

So, yet again, no real mention of Reverb specifically. Don’t worry. It’s coming. I promise.

Don’t you just love the anticipation?

Chris Kinsley
Content Developer