Talk with anyone working with teens in high school or even young adults in college and you will hear tales of struggle. Today’s young people have often been placed in situations with little meaningful adult interaction for their entire life. Many have no idea how to do even basic things like boiling water. Even more frightening, they may not have the Christian Life Skills necessary to obey God.
We rarely discuss it in church, but much of what God wants us to do must be taught. If it were easy to learn how to love our neighbor or avoid sin, the New Testament would be much shorter than it is. Paul, Peter, James and the others had to write more specifics. They needed to explain in more detail what it meant to avoid sin or love your neighbor or give generously or avoid false teachers.
Our teens need even more help. Let’s suppose you have taught them a lesson on handling conflicts in godly ways. You may have done a great job and they are totally committed to changing the ungodly ways they have been managing their conflicts with friends and family. If, however, their home and school environments do not regularly display handling conflict in godly ways, how are they going to know what to do?
Teach One Reach One has developed a new teen curriculum – Living the Christian Life. This free curriculum includes a “standard” teen lesson addressing a basic Christian principle, command or character trait. There is an additional part to this curriculum that can be used for a longer meeting time or during a second time together with teens. During this skills activity time, teachers can review the principles of the Bible lesson, but then teach them the actual steps to be able to put it into practice. We suggest lots of dynamic ways for students to begin practicing these new skills with the help of Christian adults. We even include a challenge each lesson to help motivate students to continue practicing these new skills after meetings.
As you can see, we grouped the various Christian Life Skills into eight, fifteen lesson tracks. These additional tracks are in development and new lessons will be posted each month. Currently, there are enough lessons online to get you through an entire quarter or semester of lessons. (While you are on our website, you may also want to take a look at our free teen devotionals for more lessons on other topics. We will be adding more of those in the future, too.)
Whether you use our lessons or some other curriculum, give your teens the resources they need to put God’s commands and principles into practice. You may just be surprised how much more equipped they become to live out God’s Words.