Over time, I\u2019ve formulated a response to that FAQ that I can quickly copy and paste into an email or text message, and it\u2019s just a summary of my thoughts and experiences with two of the major curriculum producers in the United States. Of their flagship products, both reflect two major selling points for every youth leader I\u2019ve ever met; they\u2019re built for both large-group and small-group experiences and they\u2019re extremely easy to use.<\/p>\n
As an aside, it\u2019s important to note how the movement in youth ministry to small groups and middle-school\/high-school splits has created an opportunity for curricula writers and publishers to build entire product lines and packages for youth leaders who<\/p>\n
- \n
- desire continuity across multiple youth worship experiences, and<\/li>\n
- need resources that could easily be made available to volunteers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
These publishers have built online dashboards for purchasing and downloading messages, lessons, handouts and debriefs on the go\u2014month-long series\u2019, complete with graphics and bumper videos and social media posts packaged into one big folder for immediate implementation and consumption. Those series\u2019 are situated within the publisher\u2019s broader scope and sequence and pedagogical philosophy\u2026 and when adhered to, they demand few decisions from the leader beyond the purchase and actual application.<\/p>\n
You could literally<\/p>\n
- \n
- purchase the curriculum an hour before the service begins,<\/li>\n
- download the whole series with one-click,<\/li>\n
- send the small-group leader resources to volunteers,<\/li>\n
- load the powerpoint slides and upload social media posts\u2014<\/li>\n
- then print the manuscript for the lead communicator and still have forty-five minutes to greet students as they walk into your environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I must confess\u2014that kind of ease-of-use is appealing, especially when trying to coordinate multiple volunteers in different environments across several venues and meeting times. I\u2019ve readily recommended these two products because I\u2019ve found them to be biblically conservative, ecumenical in the best possible ways, and cost-effective for the average church.<\/p>\n
Yet, I find myself circling the same mountain every year, usually around the beginning of school. After a summer of mission trips and YouthQuest, we reengage our programs and processes at the end of August and I find myself longing for a genuine move of God\u2019s Spirit in our youth services that only seems to come when I set the prescribed curriculum aside and preach from the overflow of my heart. Having recently spent time reflecting on that missing component, I\u2019ve found my two reliable and recommended publishers<\/p>\n
- \n
- offer good principles from scripture,<\/li>\n
- creative packaging for their series,<\/li>\n
- a logical scope and sequence,<\/li>\n
- and a solid methodology for incorporating small-groups\u2014<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
but they seem to skip right over opportunities for Spirit-empowered \u201cself-resourcing\u201d prior to teaching and preaching.[1]<\/a> There are basic outlines and bullet points, themed games and pre-selected illustrations, memory verses and personal application questions\u2026 but there\u2019s no emphasis on teaching from the overflow of my own relationship and experience with Christ. Rather, there\u2019s usually a common-sense reminder to replace all the stories from the author\u2019s manuscript with my own. The selling point of its\u2019 convenience factor\u2014that it\u2019s literally \u201call done for me<\/em>\u201d\u2014is also a trap because it\u2019s all done for me.<\/em><\/p>\n
I once downloaded the Tru curriculum produced by David C. Cook over the summer and made plans to implement it on a trial basis to close out the first semester of this year. I had already spoken with a couple of leaders, advising them that I would soon be shifting gears with them to test-drive a new curriculum that would probably look different than that to which they are accustomed\u2026 and then I saw that one sample lesson from Tru was fifteen pages long (!) with no succinct outlines, memory verse call-outs, or bold-print application points. I skimmed through it and found myself quickly overwhelmed with more information than I would have predicted from any kind of youth-focused series\u2014and quietly exclaimed to myself, \u201cThere\u2019s no way my teachers will get onboard with this huge amount of material!\u201d I tossed it aside on my desk and revisited the online dashboard of ol\u2019 faithful and was back on track in fifteen minutes\u2014our new series downloaded and emailed to all my leaders with a few short clicks.<\/p>\n
And it occurred to me only recently that perhaps that\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n
Could my ongoing frustration with the amount of fruit evidenced by our services and processes be the result of my own hurrying through the personal learning curve of these series? Could the lack of real, Spirit-empowered conversations happening at our small-group tables on a weekly basis be the result of me teaching material that hasn\u2019t been filtered through my own relationship first?<\/p>\n
The two tried-and-true products are good, and they can be valuable to any leader, but if they are implemented like microwaveable macaroni and cheese dinners<\/em>, there\u2019ll never be any real substance to our discipleship processes. Even the Son of God taught (the disciples on the road to Emmaus) from Scriptures as they first applied to Him!<\/p>\n
All of that leads me to say\u2014I desire a genuine move of God\u2019s Spirit in our youth services and processes. I wish for His truth to be exegeted, illustrated and applied to all of our lives in relevant ways. I long for students to be truly transformed for life, not just trained in religious routines for a season.<\/p>\n
Moreover, I\u2019m confident that I could continue to utilize the programs and series of those trusted publishers\u2014even armed with a fervency and an urgency to study more and encourage my leaders to do so also\u2014but they seem to have taken that work out of it\u2026 Like taking the toll-road exit off the scenic-route discipleship highway, they make it really easy to get through a scope and sequence over several years\u2014<\/p>\n
- \n
- encapsulating the truth of God\u2019s word into bite-sized talking points,<\/li>\n
- summarizing eternal, life-giving principles into quickly-digestible, easily-forgotten pithy sayings, and<\/li>\n
- truncating the Gospel into brief \u201ctalks\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\u2014but what kind of toll has been taken on our group after four (or six) years of discipling shortcuts?<\/p>\n
Wouldn\u2019t it be better to take the longer, more difficult road that forces me to own the truths of God\u2019s word personally before I communicate it with my students? How much better would my messages be if they were delivered with the passion and enthusiasm that comes from His word having \u201cburned\u201d in my heart for the whole week prior?<\/p>\n
Tru makes room for that kind of self-discovery for the teacher and communicator. It can\u2019t be quickly digested and regurgitated like pre-chewed food. It\u2019s built around the premise that you\u2019ll teach better, and your students will glean more from your messages when you\u2019ve owned the truth for yourself; not cramming a few talking points in as you wait between stop-lights, but reading and reflecting daily and allowing the Spirit of God to first do the work in you, then to speak for Himself through you. It\u2019s avoiding the shortcuts that certainly help make a program run smoothly, and choosing instead to pause long enough on the discipleship road to Tru-ly[2]<\/a> hear the voice of the Spirit.<\/p>\n
I earnestly desire to see lives and families transformed into Christ followers. Can I really afford to pay the toll of prepackaged Bible studies that offer shortcuts around the work of the Spirit in the teacher?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> They might argue that I am responsible for my own preparation\u2014they would be correct.<\/p>\n
[2]<\/a> See what I did there? \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
About the Author<\/p>\n
![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2014\/08\/Stephen-Jones.jpg\")
<\/a> Stephen Jones- students@iphc.org<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nTeam Leader, Student Ministries Advisory Team<\/strong><\/p>\n
Rev. Stephen Jones currently serves as the Pastor of Student Ministries at Whitnel Pentecostal Holiness Church in Lenoir, NC. In 2002, Stephen earned a Bachelor\u2019s of Arts degree in Christian Ministries from Emmanuel College in Franklin Springs, GA. In 2008, he completed a Master\u2019s of Divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC. Since 2002, Stephen\u2019s full-time ministry to teenagers has spanned two IPHC Conferences, three IPHC churches, and numerous IPHC summer camps. Stephen currently occupies the Leadership and Skill Development Portfolio under the Student Ministries Advisory Team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,20,4,27,171,26,305],"tags":[127,534],"class_list":{"0":"post-2675","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boys-ministries","8":"category-childrens-ministries","9":"category-discipleship-ministries","10":"category-girls-ministries-childrens-ministries","11":"category-leadership-2","12":"category-royal-rangers","13":"category-student-ministires","14":"tag-resources-2","15":"tag-tru-curriculum","16":"entry"},"title_es":"Tru Versus la salida f\u00e1cil","content_es":"","author_name":"","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/Tru-vs-the-Easy-Way-Out.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T9u2-H9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}