With lessons created, written, and tested by active, experienced youth leaders who work with young people every week … never before has there been a resource this comprehensive, this practical, and this relevant for teaching the New Testament to your students. Walking students through the New Testament used to feel like a daunting task—especially if you’ve tried to create studies that are relevant and engaging to your students. Now, you have a diverse team of nearly thirty youth ministry practitioners working for you—and they’ve put together more than 100 studies that will make your job easier while helping your students dig into the Bible. Whether you lead them yourself or hand the lessons over to your volunteers, each lesson is easy to implement and can be used alone or combined with lessons that have already been planned. You’ll also find a searchable CD-ROM, making it easier than ever to find exactly what you need to help lead your students deeper into the life-changing books from the New Testament.

Never before has there been a resource this comprehensive and relevant for teaching the New Testament to your students. With the topic overview, ideas for games, outlines for messages, study questions, and tips for using real-life experiences, you now have everything you need to lead students through more than 100 New Testament lessons.

Nearly 200 ready-to-use ideas for hard-hitting Bible lessons and relevant worship services for teenagers! - Bible Study Meetings . . . Techniques and approaches for making any Bible lesson -- topical or scriptural -- appealing to unchurched teenagers as well as to preachers' kids. - Creative Bible Lessons . . . 'Martha and Mary Malpractice' (page 67), 'Noah and the Ark I. Q. Test' (page 43), and 70 more very different, very fun, and very solid Bible lessons. - Theme Lessons . . . Build an entire lesson on a specific theme. Try 'Feet Meeting' (page 118) -- foot games followed by a lesson on the symbolic importance of washing each other's feet. You aren't into feet? Okay, what about the hands of Jesus? Or the light versus darkness? They're all here! - Bible Games . . . These won't speed your kids into seminary, but they certainly go a long way toward making the Bible interesting to your students -- and fun, too! - Worship Services . . . Some are informal, others have a liturgical feel -- and all are innovative. Here are the ideas for communion, confession, music, prayer, and Scripture reading. And More . . . Full lessons (all the components are here, from opening mixers to closing prayers), board games (with reproducible game 'boards'), and ideas for using guest speakers and special projects. Whether you're a youth worker or a recreation director at a church, school, club, or camp -- Creative Meetings, Bible Lessons, and Worship Ideas is your storehouse of proven, youth-group tested ideas.

This book is like no other book because it is the only known book to provide the ABC's for organizing or reorganizing the Sunday school or church school. The book is also loaded with suggestive forms to help any leader to construct his or her own forms for Sunday school or church school administration. This book reminds the prospective teacher, the current teacher, the VBS coordinator, training administrators, and the support leader and workers of their responsibilities. Any church pastor, superintendent, church leader, professor of Christian education, or director of Christian education will find this book as a valuable tool in Christian education.

The Bible is a photo album, brimming with self-portraits of a God who wants to be known. God has put these pictures in the Bible to reveal his character. By examining them, we discover who God is and why he’s worth knowing better. And we discover something else: who he wants us to be. He wants us to copy his picture into our own character. Wild Truth Bible Lessons--Pictures of God 2 is a guide to 12 God-pictures taken straight from the Photo Album. They are active Bible lessons for junior high and middle school Sunday school classes or youth group meetings, each one based on one of the 50 pictures of God and presented energetically, relevantly, and scripturally in the companion student book Wild Truth Journal: Pictures of God. The lessons are loaded with off-the-wall and easy-to-do discussion starters, video ideas, scripts, games with a point. And, of course, Bible passages and studies that springboard junior highers from the abstract into the concrete as (open Bibles in hand) they explore the nature of God in a lively, relevant way, and then begin practicing in their own lives the traits of God.Here’s how the lessons are organized: * Picture Prep grabs your group’s attention to prepare them for what’s ahead.* Action Shot takes your students into the Bible to catch God in the act of revealing his character.* Self-Portrait explores the given aspect of God’s character...how it makes God just that much more awesome...and why it’s a very good trait for us to have, too.* Print It! challenges your students to print God’s picture into their own lives by living out his character in an immediately practical way.12 lessons

As profound, as relevant, as funny as you are . . . teenagers still listen to each other more than to an adult youth worker.You may grimace, but you can’t deny it--students talking to each other usually means more to them than adults talking to them.The Student Leadership Training Manual helps you equip your senior highers for leading their peers and taking charge of as much of the ministry as they want or are able--helping and evangelizing their peers . . . organizing ministry teams . . . planning and executing their own youth ministry programming.Here are 31 training sessions for discipling student leaders in a small-group setting--sessions that start in the Bible and reach deep into teenagers’ experience . . . ready for you to implement a clear and effective program that trains your students for higher levels of leadership, regardless of where they are now.Plus 24 pages just for you, a veritable primer on how to cultivate student leadership:The role of adultsAuthority vs. responsibilitySetting student leaders up for successTeaching students not just the whats, but the whys and howsHelping them discover their spiritual giftednessPerfect for youth workers, CE directors, associate pastors, and small-group leaders--anyone who works with a youth group’s core kids.

The lights are dim. The crowd is hushed.And a dozen teens start laughing hysterically, piling into a human "boat" that helps set up the mind-blowing miracle of Jesus walking on the stormy Sea of Galilee.Maybe you’re after a booster shot for midweek youth group meetings that feel "same old, same old." Or you’ve just been asked (last minute, of course) to run the service at the shelter during your mission trip, and you need a jolt of energy that’ll draw kids into your lesson. Whatever your creative need, Spontaneous Melodramas 2 will fill the bill. Continuing where its predecessor--Spontaneous Melodramas--left off, this volume offers another two dozen tales from the Old and New Testaments that bring the biblical accounts to life . . . with distinctive, contemporary twists!Although these no-rehearsal skits will leave your students in stitches, the humor never buries the message of Scripture. So you can be confident when bringing your kids--whether or not they’re familiar with the Bible--into sketches like:The Sumptuous Spare Rib (Adam and Eve)Touched by an Angel (Jacob’s wrestling match)Love on a Threshing Floor (Ruth and Boaz)The Wizard of Eyes (Jesus heals the blind man)The Great Pool Party (Healing at the pool)Dead Man Walking (Jesus raises Lazarus)Spontaneous Melodramas 2 is full of flexible skits that youth workers, Sunday school teachers, camp counselors, and retreat directors can use for discussion starters, icebreakers, or talk intros. And they’re natural fits for Bible study programming, all-nighters, mission trips, camps, retreats, parent meetings, and many other events.More than a year’s worth of slapstick, pratfalls, and fun, Spontaneous Melodramas 2 will make the Bible--and its unforgettable characters and adventures--extra memorable for your students.

Students who've experienced the Bible's great truths, not just read about them, can walk through their lives with a firm foundation under their feet. They know what they believe and why, and they feel a lot more comfortable in situations that are challenging to their faith. This collection of lessons covering the most important truths in the Bible gives you an easy-to-use resource that will plunge your teenagers into the beautiful basics: the reality of God in the world, the truth about who Jesus really is, and why all of us need a "Good Shepherd" to find us and reclaim us...13 powerhouse lessons in all. And because they're created by the editors of Group/Simply Youth Ministry, every lesson uses the R.E.A.L. learning approach--Relational, Experiential, Applicable, and Learner-based. This approach is not only easy to lead, but also guarantees that your students will engage with these great truths. They'll learn how to live out their relationship with Jesus in their everyday lives as they wrestle with issues that really matter... - Why bad things happen to good people, and how Jesus brings beauty out of ugly; - What it means to "grow into" Jesus--living and loving others the way he does; and - Learning how to depend upon the Holy Spirit in life. No matter what the life issue, the Bible offers foundational truths that can help your students live more confidently with a deeper ongoing connection to Jesus. And our concise instructions and easy-to-use reproducible handouts make your job easy. Use these lessons as "spice" in between a teaching series, or build a series around them. Also, they're easily adapted for a confirmation setting, a "new believers" class, a "grow-deep" discipleship group, or even Sunday school.

"Wes is young, enthusiastic, and perhaps a little idealistic about his new position as the youth pastor of the largest church in his denomination. Running into the ministry at full-steam with the best of plans and intentions, Wes soon learns that all the idealism and plans can’t prepare him for the struggles he’s facing. When Doug, the star quarterback, stops coming to youth group, Wes is faced with questions and frustration from the parents and church leaders. When he tries to win Doug back, Wes becomes even more confused when he learns that Doug began attending the youth group at the smaller church in town. Britt is a seasoned youth worker who has been at the smaller church in town for too many years to count. Doug ends up at Britt’s youth group, and soon after, Wes comes to Britt for insight. Only months before, Wes thought little of Britt because of his small youth group, but now he comes to Britt for help. In this creative fable, you’ll be invited into the ongoing conversations between Wes and Britt as they explore what it takes to have an effective youth ministry. You’ll watch as they discover what it takes for students to have a long-term, transformative faith. As Wes changes the way he does ministry, you might find yourself with a new perspective as well."