The latest series at SOULIES is called GOD HAS COME. We will be studying the first 3 chapters of John’s Gospel. I thought it might be useful to share some of the strategy in how we are approaching the teaching at SOULIES this term. (Props to creationswap for art)
- It’s from a gospel – any book of the bible would have been good! But, I’m keen to give a more evangelistic edge to our Friday night talks. The gospels are easy to do that because Jesus is speaking and when he’s not it’s about him.
- Manageable chunks – rather than 3 chapters at a time we’re looking at approx 1/2 a chapter per week.
- Junior and Senior Crew are doing the same series – this may not be the pattern forever, however, I’ve been trying to create an identity larger than just the junior group or senior group by themselves. Even if we’re in two locations, the same series helps us to identify with that larger youth community.
- Soulies Small Groups are studying the same section – this helps to create continuity between Friday night and our Sunday small groups. While I value the principle of having leaders write their own studies, I’m also aware that that’s a big job! So I hope that having the series written will be a good service and model to small group leaders.
- We are producing the ‘DAILY BIBLE JOURNAL‘ – this is a small booklet that encourages young punks to spend 5 minutes a day in the Bible. It includes: daily reading notes, sermon notes space and Bible study. It seemed to be received well on Friday and Sunday. I’m praying it will help to develop a hunger for the Word among our community.
- There’s an Online component – I’m keen to use new media to encourage people to dig into the Bible. So each week, we will have a Sunday (no later than Monday) blog post with a video intro for the week’s readings as well as the daily reading notes and a link to an online Bible. I hope that this helps more people to participate.
See this blog post for a copy of the Daily Bible Journey.
See below for the first Bible intro, as well as our bumper vid
See www.soulies.net for more info
See all my youth ministry blog posts here.
Thanks for sharing Dave! Very helpful.
I really like the idea of the video intro to the passage for the week.
no worries man.
i’ve done the work in writing a 100 word intro for each week, so turning that into a short vid is easy enough. i’ve also got a one take policy!
we’ll see how it goes!!
Dave. Just logged on to the soulies site- pretty impressive multimedia stuff goi g on. Loved the video intro and also looked at the bill hybels talk. Great to know our youth are well connected through your work. Awesome stuff.