What would your students ask if they could ask anything about God, faith or life? Benjer McVeigh found out. A few years before he wrote this post, his youth ministry ran a series built entirely on the students’ own questions. One Sunday, the students got 3 x 5 cards and could write down whatever they wanted to ask. Each week after that, the group voted on which question the next message would tackle.
McVeigh is a pastor in Utah, a husband and a foster and adoptive dad, and he blogs to help Christians serve, lead and love well. In this post he simply shares all 50 questions his students handed in.
The list is worth a slow read. Many questions are the ones you’d expect: How do we know God is real? Where did God come from? Why does God allow suffering? Others are about heaven and hell, ghosts, the unforgivable sin, dinosaurs, or where all the other people came from after Adam and Eve left the garden. Some are refreshingly blunt, like the student who wanted to know why school is so bad. And at least one is heavy: what to do when a friend wants to end their life. It’s a reminder that some students carry far more into youth group than you can see.
McVeigh says the cards taught him a lot. One question stuck with him in particular: why it’s fine for a church to run a coffee shop when Jesus drove the merchants out of the temple. Use the list to plan a series of your own, to check whether your teaching answers what your students are really asking, or simply as a nudge to give them room to ask. He ends by asking his readers about the best question a teenager has ever asked them. What would yours be?
More from Pulse
- Devotional “Who Created God?”
- Youth Group Session “The Problem of Evil”
- Is Your Child Borrowing Your Faith?
- Pastoral Conversations with Teenagers: 7 Practical Tips
- Together Against Suicide
This article by Benjer McVeigh first appeared on his blog, benjermcveigh.com. Pulse published a German version in December 2022 (in German).
