I was thinking: Wouldn’t it be great to have a fairly comprehensive list of topics and corresponding books that could be used as a foundational text for teaching? That way, if your group was going to examine Revelation or spiritual disciplines or evangelism there was a list you could go to in order to find a quality book on the subject.

For this to happen, we would need to do it in two phases: first of all, a comprehensive list of topics, which would include different books or sections of the Bible, needs to be compiled. If you have a scope and sequence type chart that you use for planning your ministry over the long term, would you consider sharing it with me? A few of these put together and we could get a pretty exhaustive list of topics.

Then I would need help figuring out which books are the best for being foundational texts for the various topics. I would think a few parameters would apply:

• You need to have actually read the book. If you have actually used it as a foundational teaching text, even better.
• It needs to be understood by a typical layperson. If you have an adult volunteer teaching or helping create curriculum, they should be able to read it without an M.Div.
• It needs to be short enough to make it possible for someone to actually read it and use it for teaching. If you are planning a study on the resurrection, it is likely that reading N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God (700 pages) is a bit ambitious. For example, when I was teaching on the Psalms, Eugene Peterson’s book covered one Psalm in each chapter that was around 10-15 pages long. Each week I read a chapter and crafted my lesson. It was a manageable amount of reading, taking no longer than 30 minutes at a leisurely pace.
• It needs to be a good book. One that made you think and one that will make those you are teaching think. Now, I know that with different theological persuasions the definition of a good book is fluid, but I think we could make it work. Heck, maybe we could have categories of books for the different theological streams.

What do you think? Would a list like this be helpful? Would you see yourself using it? Or do you think it’s too much work? Or is it not on the right level for teaching teens?

Let me know. If there is enough interest, then maybe I’ll take on this project (probably in some wiki-style form).f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

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In order to help us evaluate success on this level in youth ministry, he offered some questions to ask about our own faithfulness. Are we personally faithful…

• at spending time in God’s word for myself (not for a Bible study or small group)?
• in spending time with God in prayer (and not just for youth in the ministry)?
• in taking a full day off, using all my vacation days, getting exercise, eating properly, getting enough sleep, etc?
• in letting my ministry be Christ’s ministry?
• in modeling all the above to my leaders/youth and empowering them to do the same?

These are some good markers, but I want to address one specifically. His first question is a common one in ministry circles. There is a difference between studying the Bible for personal growth and studying the Bible for teaching and preaching, they say. If all you ever do is study for teaching and preaching, then you are not spending personal time with God studying the Bible. I want to ask, Why is that?

I think it is completely possible to study the Bible for personal growth and for teaching at the same time. In fact, I might go so far as to say that unless we are studying scripture for ourselves then we should not be teaching or preaching on it. The old admonition to separate out personal scripture study from preparation for teaching simply creates a dichotomy where one doesn’t need to exist. I’m not sure I want someone to be studying one passage of scripture for themselves and then teaching me out of another section because he or she thinks I really need to know about it.

If we taught out of the lessons we have learned from scripture we will be better, more authentic teachers. If a passage or lesson is worth teaching others about, it is worth studying personally. So study it personally first, and then prepare your lesson or sermon. There is really no need to separate it out. Obviously, there may be times when you need to personally study outside of passages that you are preparing to teach on, but I don’t think it is healthy to think that when we are studying scripture to teach that it somehow doesn’t “count” towards our own personal growth. It is possible to do it in such a way that will both grow ourselves and make us better teachers.f you liked this, you’ll probably like:

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