Guide for Teens to Lead a Teen Bible Study

Teens leading a teen Bible study is a very effective way to reach young people, develop leadership skills, social skills and proactively learn biblical information. Since teens are at an age where they have a deep desire to be with peers and avoid (and rebel) from parents and authority figures, having them work together is a win-win situation. The adult supervisor must balance learning priorities with the freedom and creativity the teens will demand.
  1. Set Goals

    • One of the first tasks is for the authority figure to detail goals of the project. They should be very general so that the teens who will eventually design and supervise the class will be able to create their own sub-goals. For example, if the overall goal is for students to be able to identify 10 main characters in the Old Testament, the teens in charge of designing the program may elect to have students design Facebook or Myspace pages for the characters. They may design skits, audio/video resources, question and answer worksheets or art projects. The supervisor's task to allow the teens independence to create their own project and see it through from the ground up.

    Set Limits

    • The supervisor ought to ensure that guidelines are followed such as mutual respect, order, time limits and that an appropriate authority approves outside resources. Many times, teens will understand their peers much better than adults and will utilize cutting-edge technology and pop culture to instill lesson goals much quicker and more effectively than an adult teacher could.

    Be a Guide

    • The adult's job is also to gently guide and advise the teens so their program will be optimal. If the teens creating the program want to have each classmate bring an item from home, the adult ought to question what would happen if some classmates forget? What if the wealthier classmates bring higher quality products, will this affect the class at all?

    Question, Don't Demand

    • With teens, simple, logical questions work much better than demands. When the supervisor begins demanding certain details (assuming they do not violate ethics and organizational goals), the teen will begin to feel that this is really the supervisor's program and will most likely rebel in some way.

    Mistakes Are Good

    • Allow mistakes to a limit. If you see the teens are forgetting supplies, question if they have all the things they need and what would happen if X, Y or Z were forgotten. If they are planning a lesson that would go too long, you can question them about scheduling, but if they insist, allow them to overplan. The worst that will happen is that they can not cover all the material and will learn for next time to schedule better.

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