The Youth Are Ready For Solid Food

The youth Bible study that I attended on Wednesday nights when I was in high school had about two to three hundred students on any given week. As with any large gathering of youth, we were a spiritually diverse bunch. I knew many students were there because they were hungry for the word of God, and going to Bible study allowed them to dive deeper into it. But I also knew that there were many there who only went because their parents forced them to or they were only interested in socializing with their friends.

It is difficult to pastor such a diverse group of youth. How should Bible study be structured when you have youth who have no interest in God and are actively pursuing sin sitting alongside mature Christians who are hungry for the word of God? The approach that I see some youth programs take is to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I am not saying that they would preach non-Biblical ideas or approve of sin to appeal to non-Christian youth, but that they would preach a simplified gospel message or give topical messages like How to be Christian at School or How to Pray. The goal of this approach is to get the non-Christian youth to accept God or for the Christian youth who are weaker in their faith to grow closer to God.

preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
2 Timothy 4:2 ESV

I think that a better approach can be found in 2 Timothy 4:2. Paul’s instruction to Timothy for the church in Ephesus is to preach the word. The same instruction applies for every church and every youth group today. The Bible is inspired by God and profitable for teaching (2 Timothy 3:16). It is living and active and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). It is not pastors or teachers or leaders who cause the members of their flock to grow, it is God (1 Corinthians 3:6-7). By teaching the Bible we let the word of God speak to every heart and allow him to give the growth, rather than thinking that we know how to make them grow.

I am thankful that the youth pastor when I was in high school knew this well, because his approach to minister to both those strong and weak in the faith was to preach the word of God. Of course one may need to adapt the explanations, illustrations, and applications to the audience, but the core was always the Bible. God used his word to minister to me through those messages and in different ways he used his word to minister to everyone else attending as well.

That youth pastor also hosted an event on Saturday nights once a month during which he would teach more in-depth topics relating to the Bible for a longer amount of time, akin to a college lecture. For example, one evening he did a survey of the entire Old Testament and another evening he did an in-depth study of one book of the Bible. This was not as widely attended as the Wednesday night Bible study, but there were still many youth who attended because they were mature Christians who were hungry for the word of God.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food
Hebrews 5:12 ESV

In Hebrews 5:12 the author uses the analogy of milk and solid food for different kinds of teaching. He likens the basic Christian doctrine to milk that a baby is only able to eat, and the solid food is more advanced teaching for mature believers once that spiritual baby has grown in their faith. The danger that I see many youth programs fall into is to paint the entire youth group with a broad stroke labelling them all as new believers and immature Christians. I think it is true that there are many youth who have been brought to church by their parents for their whole life but are nevertheless immature in their faith. However, there are still many youth who are genuinely mature Christians. They have a deep understanding of the gospel. They hunger for the word. They look for opportunities to share the gospel with their non-believing friends. They are able to discern sin in their life, repent of it, and work to root it out by God’s grace.

The youth are ready for solid food. They need to hear the word preached, but they also need to learn to study the word for themselves. They need to learn to discern for themselves what honors and what dishonors God. They need to be able to make a defense of their faith from any who would attack it and share the truth of the gospel to those who do not know it. We are poor shepherds if we cannot provide solid food to those mature Christian youth who are ready for it.

For many years, my primary area of ministry was with youth. The youth group that I taught was very small, which gave me the privilege of knowing each of the youth very well. God blessed me with a youth group that was full of mature Christians that were ready for solid food. They all had a solid understanding of the gospel and basic Christian doctrine. They didn't need to be fed that spiritual milk again and again. Because of this, I went in-depth through books of the Bible with them and taught them how to answer difficult questions of Christian life by looking to what the Bible has to say. My priority as they approached college was to teach them inductive Bible study so that they could feed themselves that solid food directly from the word of God.

Not every youth group is able to spend all their time doing these things because there are almost always some youth who are not mature Christians and unable to eat solid food. But as mentioned before, the answer to this is still to preach the word, which is living and active and speaks to the heart of mature and immature believers alike. And for those youth who are mature believers, there can still be these intermittent opportunities to dive deeper into the Bible, learn inductive Bible study, learn apologetics, learn systematic theology, and any other variety of solid food. The youth group from when I was in high school only did this once a month, and that was enough to be an enormous blessing for many of us in that youth group. It is the duty of the shepherd to provide for the sheep according to their needs.