Youth Sunday School - Sharing our faith with friends - Jan 27

This week Jake taught the youth class and the focus was on evangelism. Carlon's Bible study covered this topic at the end of last year and it was also our topic at Alive last week... with Clue and some other outreach events coming up, we want to prepare our students to both invite those friends to church but also to be able to talk about their faith with them afterwards.

Jake's lesson focused on what we often forget to teach: HOW to talk about our faith and what to say. The majority of the lesson was spent in groups of 2 or 3 as the kids practiced sharing with each other.

Main lesson components:

Talking about what God has done for us:

• How has God kept you on the right track to make wise choices and avoid pitfalls?
• How did God’s love fill a void in your life?
• How has God’s forgiveness helped you let go of pain from your past?
• As you’ve read the Bible, what have you learned about your purpose in life?

Connecting our friends to God:

• Students shared a bit about the friends they would like to share with (it's important to know where friends stand on the topic of faith so we can prepare for discussions and questions).
• Students practiced explaining the good news to each other in their own words

Be ready for questions:

• What challenges have you faced since choosing to follow Jesus?
• What rewards have you seen since making that decision?
• How is your life different today because of your friendship with Jesus?
• While evangelism is often scary, a big takeaway point from this part of the lesson was some good news: Students can answer these questions better than anyone else can!

Be ready for prayer:

• Students talked about how to simply pray with a friend who wants to become a Christian