Next Year’s High School Curriculum |

The Bible study our High School youth ministry is using this year is okay, but it isn’t good enough that we want to keep using it next year.

For the last couple months I’ve been searching for next year’s curriculum, and I think I found it. James Hornecker wrote a Bible study on the Gospel of Mark called, The Lion’s Roar. James has a Masters in Theology from Franciscan University and has worked with the NET team—so he’s a Catholic theologian who knows good youth ministry. I just finished going through the study on my own and I loved it, but don’t take my word, here is what Scott Hahn has to say about it:

“I highly recommend The Lion’s Roar to all who wish to understand God’s Word more fully.”

If my other small group leaders like the Bible study, we will definitely use it next year. There are twelve Bible study units, so we’ll also put together a couple meetings on morality, friends, self-image, etc. and that should get us through the first semester. The book is just a simple Bible study, so we’ll also have to find our own games for each meeting . . . but I’ve never found a curriculum that I didn’t have to do that for anyway.

There is an excellent review about James’s study at Amazon.com (Don’t buy the book from Amazon.com, the seller is charging $8 more than the listed price). The review describes the study in more detail, so you’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting into.

If you want to know more about how we would use this, see my post titled “How we organize our youth ministry meetings.”

Just so you know, when I say “Bible Study” I’m referring to the Bible study technique of reading a text then discussing questions. We don’t stick strictly to the Bible, we also cover the Catechism and Encyclicals, and occasionally other spiritually edifying texts. But that’s too complicated a sentence to say every time I talk about what our youth group is doing, so I just call it a Bible study because people usually have a rough idea of what I mean.