• How could God have Jesus as a son if He didn’t have a wife?This is a great exercise to do with your students- we always hand out index cards and let them go to town with as many questions as they want. Not only does it help you see what topics to hit on, but it also helps you see where your students are at in life.
• I want to be able to make sure that if I die now I will be saved. I want to say the prayer but not in front of all the 5th and 6th graders.
• Did or do you have/had concerns of death?
• Can we play ping pong?
• How did they come up with the name “Jesus?”
• What is your favorite Bible story and why do you like it?
• How did God make us?
• Does God love the devil?
• Do you believe there is a path to heaven and hell?
Our younger students seem to respond to this activity better than our older students. With the high schoolers, we do something called "Elephant in the Church" and we throw out hot button issues [gay marriage, slavery, abortion, war, materialism, world religions vs. Christianity, murder, etc.] and let them wrestle through a discussion about it. I always have my Bible, Counseling Teens in Crisis book [by Parrott], laptop, and a list of what the United Methodist Church's standpoint is on each topic. It's a great activity, but you have to make sure you've got a certain level of trust built up so students can speak freely. I remember the first time we did it, we got into murder/capital punishment and a student said, "If someone came after my family and killed them, I'd want to kill them for doing it. I wouldn't be able to trust the courts to deal with it appropriately." You have to provide a safe space for comments like that, because guaranteed, they'll come up.
Our kids have amazing minds that are constantly wrestling through all kinds of issues. What better place for them to do this than at the church, where not only can they explore the topic, but they can also dig into the theological side of it all.
