With the Lutheran Carnival on break for an undetermined length of time, I looked for a new way to continue the exchange between bloggers and expose them to new audiences. I came up with this idea, a new kind of “cross-posting” (all puns intended). Instead of someone bringing a whole bunch of post links together and saying, “Read,” this is more of a true exchange. A guest writer will write a post for NR, and I write a post for theirs. Writing for a new audience is a challenge I enjoy, and the topic may not be even religious: I may write a post later about a canoeing experience in Minnesota for a Minnesota blogger.
Frank Gillespie of Putting Out the Fire was one of the first to respond to my request for cross-posting. Frank teaches the catechism to high school students, which lines right up with my interest in teaching the faith to children. Thank you, Frank, for being Guinea Pig #1!
In exchange for the post below I wrote this post for Frank’s audience.
“But why don’t we use Oreos and milk?” That was the question posed to me by one of my high school students a little while ago during my Sunday school class.
We had been studying the Augsburg Confession which was a defense given concerning charges of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. The reformers had gathered at the Diet of Augsburg to speak before Emperor Charles V in 1530. All together, there were twenty-eight articles defining where the reformers agreed with the Roman church, where they disagreed, and what abuses they thought that needed to be corrected to return the Romans to the historic church guided by Scripture and faith by grace and not by traditions, papal bulls, and justification by one’s own work.
Good meaty stuff! But is it appropriate material for teenagers? You’d better believe it is!
I started teaching the high school class seven years ago when a paid staff member whose responsibility was primarily youth work left our congregation to pursue other job opportunities. We saw an opportunity to teach outside of any experiential small group model that had been promoted and become popular in many circles, including our own, for the last thirty years.
Since the 1970’s a great many of us were told that to “reach” kids we must meet them where they are and not throw a whole bunch of theology, doctrine, and Scripture at them. We had been told by those “in the know” and much smarter than we, that we should talk about the things that matter and are important to teenagers on Sunday morning. In other words, whatever the teenagers felt was important, that’s what should be taught.
The problem is that if they aren’t grounded in Scripture to begin with, how are they going to know what’s really important? Is it human nature to look in the mirror and say, “Why yes, of course I’m a sinner”? No. Human nature is to turn away from that mirror precisely because we are conceived in sin, born in sin, and live in sin. God through Scripture forces us all to look at that mirror and see that we are really bad people that will always fall short of what God’s perfect Law demands.
How can any of us understand why Christ is being nailed to the cross without reading and being taught what Scripture teaches? It is through the hearing of the Word, rightly taught, that God feeds his sheep. To just sit around talking about what eating means to the individual feeds no one.
So what was the outcome of our new regime? Well, to be honest, by the end of year one, we did lose a few kids. Most of the kids that left said that they only wanted to sing songs and didn’t understand why we wouldn’t allow them to play games or watch selected episodes of the Simpsons that talked about religion. Other kids (and an adult leader as well) left because we would rather do a study on Timothy than talk about drugs and guns in schools and how pop culture issues affected their lives for a month or more.
We ended up with was a class full of students that no longer felt like they were being treated as if they were incapable of reading or understanding the Scriptures. For the first time they were told that if they could be expected to complete an advance placement calculus course at school, we would not treat them as if they couldn’t read a verse or two of Scripture or even look things up on their own.
“But why don’t we use Oreos and milk?” This was the question challenging us concerning the hows and whys of the Lord’s Supper. All my student wanted was for me to show where in Scripture it said we had to use bread and wine. To avoid looking ignorant before his peers, he decided to ask the question with metaphors. And that was just fine with me; I got it and answered his question. He was happy and I was overjoyed. With so many of his friends saying that Jesus would’ve just wanted us to use grape juice the question was more complex and deeper than it appeared on the surface. And at the end of the day, my student’s question was just that, a question. All too often when an adult asks a question, it’s in the form of a statement.
I have found that teaching teenagers is one of the rewarding and difficult things I do. I typically spend five to ten hours a week preparing for my one hour lessons as I know they will do their best to try to “stump” the teacher. At the end of the day that’s OK with me. I have worked the routine into part of my devotional time during the week, and this has helped me to learn and grow in the faith as well. Both teacher and student benefit here, plain and simple.
Too often we treat our youth like they are simply not capable of learning the simplest things. We know they are capable of learning at least two or more languages, physics, and chemistry. However, we seem almost afraid to teach them the very basics of the Christian faith. We often seem happy to let them go off to college without even the basics that every preteen should grasp and believe.
Don’t be afraid to challenge the children of every age! Additionally, don’t assume they are going off topic or just acting goofy when one of them asks “But why don’t we use Oreos and milk?” The depth and reasoning for the question might surprise you. It did for me.
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Dan
[...] in doctrine among the denominations. Help them! Sound doctrine unites rather than divides…. Guest Post: Challenging The Teenagers | Necessary Roughness …“But why don’t we use Oreos and milk?” This was the question challenging us concerning [...]