Experiment gone right?

So, tonight at youth group we had a "campfire".  It consisted of some candles on the inside of our circle and a picture of a campfire projected onto the screen.  It was good stuff.  The students played along, which is always helpful.  Why did we have a fire?  Well, because you can't tell a story without a fire, obviously.  Let me explain.

Last week at youth group we hit on the idea that worship is our response to what God has done, what God is doing, and what God will do.  Well, I think another way to put that is that "worship is our response to God's story".  So, tonight we all gathered around our makeshift campfire and dove into the Story of God.  It was pretty interesting.


Quick aside:  One aspect of doing youth ministry at the same time as Seminary is the large amounts of theory and ideas that I learn about different ways to approach youth ministry.  I always have the urge, and am actually encouraged by professors, to experiment with nontraditional ways of doing ministry.  Try things that have never  been done and find out if they work or not. 

I must confess, tonight was one of those nights where I decided to experiment a little bit.  I've never heard of anyone ever trying to tell the entire Story of the Bible in one night of youth group.  Now I know why.  It is very difficult to do.  There is just so much material to talk about in the Bible, and to chronologically tell the story in one night is REALLY hard!  While planning for tonight I had about a page worth of notes and I was only halfway through the book of Genesis.  Tonight, we skipped a lot of stuff and flew through the things we did talk about.  It was most definitely a crash course on the Story of God. 

Now, this is not to say that it was bad.  In fact, I think it worked quite well.  Or, at least, I hope it did.  I hope that the students were able to see how the Bible contains the overarching Story of God's redemptive love through history.  If nothing else, it didn't totally bomb.  And I think that is the interesting part.  It wasn't a total failure.

So, in order to keep it from becoming a really boring time of me talking A LOT about the events in the Bible, I constantly asked the students, "And then what happened?" whenever we got to another event in the Scriptures.  Not only did it keep the kids engaged - for the most part - but it tested their Bible knowledge.  We all learned (themselves included) just what their Bible literacy was.  It can be helpful to know that you don't know much.  But I digress.  We flew through the entire history of the Bible in one 35 minute sitting.  It was really fast, and slightly jumbled, and definitely lacking a bunch of stuff, but it seemed to work. 

So what's the point?  The point is, what would be the response of a semester, or a full year even, dedicated to a narrative look at the Bible?  A set amount of time of telling the Story of God.  I think it could be intriguing for a few reasons.  First, if a haphazard, one night go of things seemed to connect slightly with the students, how would a well planned, comfortably spaced account be received?  I'm willing to bet it would go over well.  Second, I'm always concerned with my students reading the Bible on their own time.  What better way to get them interested in reading it then to give them a complete framework from which to read it.  Give them a base from where they can begin reading.

Things to ponder.