To say that there are plenty of youth ministry curriculum options out there would be an understatement. But how do you sift through your options to land on one that truly benefits your youth and points them to Christ? This blog, excerpted from Connected for Life: Essential Guide to Youth Ministry, suggests some questions to ask yourself when choosing youth ministry resources.
Some youth workers (including myself) choose to write and create curriculum themselves the majority of the time so that it fits their teaching style and learning environment. Many others rely on getting curriculum from another source and adapting it to fit their circumstances, saving time on the lesson preparation that can be used in the numerous other jobs a volunteer or youth worker has (like finding their desks among mounds of paper, unread books, bulletins, and glitter that has been stuck there for the last eight years). Finally, there are a select few who don’t use any sort of curriculum and decide to “see what happens” when they get there. Those people likely aren’t reading this or any book (chances are it’s buried among all the stuff on their desk), but if you are … please change categories! Have some kind of a plan!
Regardless of which camp you fall into, consider the following questions to help you evaluate any resource or curriculum, whether you’re teaching from it or using it as a take-home or family resource. Use these to evaluate and improve your own curriculum or to help you determine whether a particular resource is worth using.
If the focus of the curriculum is all on me and how I can improve myself in my own power, take a look at where you are. You may have wandered into the self-help section (or the questionable parts of the “Christian Inspiration” section) and will need to redirect yourself back to a more sound location or a different website (for those of you who haven’t been in a bookstore in ten years or more).
A good resource shouldn’t just pat you on the back for being exactly where you’re supposed to be. God’s Law should mess with your pride and convict you of your sin while also encouraging you to live more like Christ. It’s so easy to be basic and generic with youth out of fear of overwhelming them, but they grow so much more when they are challenged. Find or create resources that make them think and wrestle with God’s truth. A book that has a slightly different worldview may actually help some of your older youth learn more because your discussion could focus on why you believe what you believe instead of just taking everything in the book as truth. The only infallible book is the Bible. Don’t be afraid to wrestle with other belief systems as a tool to reinforce your teaching of the true faith as revealed in Scripture.
Again, if the resource points your trust, hope, and confidence to anything other than the God revealed in Scripture, you may need to check the title. If it’s called Idiot’s Guide to Creating Your Own God, then it’s actually pretty accurate, but still should be avoided as well as anything with this same theme under a different, more sensible title. We’re good enough at making our own gods already; we don’t need a book to encourage us toward sin.
This is especially helpful with music. If a “Christian” song can change out “Christ” for “Sharon, James, or tacos” and still mostly make sense, you may need to find something that conveys deeper Christian truths.
The big concern here is that if a book uses twelve different versions of the Bible, then the author is probably proof-texting frequently and trying to find the wording that fits the point he or she is trying to make rather than letting Scripture speak for itself. As a rule of thumb, if a curriculum references the book of Second Opinions, it’s probably using a translation of the Bible that’s not credible.
If something is doctrinally vapid or incorrect, then we don’t really need to get to this point, but once I know something is credible, I need to ask if it is beneficial. Will anyone be awake to learn from it? Is the material engaging? Is the vocabulary too advanced for use in a junior high class but might work great for a senior high small group? Can I give this to an adult leader and expect him to figure it out or do you have to be trained at the seminary to know what’s going on?
Ultimately, this is what all the other questions lead to. Can I adapt this and still get good use out of it or are there too many problems that I can’t work around? Do I need to just use part of this and combine it with something else, or will it take so much time to make it work for our group that it’s better left alone?
Blog post excerpted from pp. 113–14 in Connected for Life: Essential Guide to Youth Ministry © 2019 Office of National Mission—Youth Ministry, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, published by Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.