We call our Sunday morning SMALL GROUP Ministry “FRAMEWORK” because we believe God has led us to design that time to help our students think, talk, and act from a biblical framework structure. Basically how we pull this off is: our students gather in our student ministry building at 9:15am for announcements and prayer. We then kick them out to their small group rooms. We have two small group leaders in every class. This is important. Our small group leaders are NOT teachers. They are leaders, disciplers, mentors, facilitators, etc. God has called me to teach on Wednesday nights, but these adults lead discussion. They discuss with the students what God has been doing in their lives the past week, what He has been teaching them, and what they got most out of Wednesday night’s message. We want our weekly ministry to be a integrative system that is all completely connected. So as I teach through all the Bible (Genesis – Revelation) and all systematic theology (Doctrine of Christ – Doctrine of the Last Things) on Wednesday nights, our Sunday mornings are designed to discuss, help our students process, and assist them in applying God’s Word to their life! So Wednesday nights is very closely tied to Sunday mornings. I teach the Word on Wednesdays, and the students discuss it on Sundays! Our small group leaders come every Sunday morning prepared to lead in a discussion of how every passage points us to Jesus Christ and how every passage applies to our lives. So there ya go, that is the gist of our Framework Small Group Ministry. (Below is how we used to do our Framework Sunday School Ministry, but we have been doing this new style for the last 2 years, and it has been the best!)
“Framework” is what I teach on Sunday mornings to my students. It gets a little more complicated. I’ll try to explain as clearly as I can. Framework is the study of Systematic Theology. From all the other curriculum I stuidied, I learned that every publisher, author, and youth pastor has their own systematic theology they are teaching. Whatever they keep coming back to is the center of their theology (whether it be God’s glory or how to make good friends). And everything they decide to teach around their central theme would indirectly teach their students a systematic theology of how to view all of life. I fell into that trap myself. And then I wondered why I was trying to reinvent the wheel.
For multiple centuries, churches have been teaching the 12-13 orthodox doctrines. Why wouldn’t I want my students to learn anything other than that? So in a 6 year plan, I’m taking my students through all of systematic theology and how its central theme is Jesus Christ. We do this on a 2 month rotation. For two months I teach the senior highers on a specific doctrine. They sit in circles and discuss the doctrine that is taught.
Then after two months, they go back to their small group class rooms to read and discuss a smaller book which is an application of that doctrine (for example: Doctrine of Christ and “Living the Cross-Centered Life” by C. J. Mahaney). While they are in their classrooms, I teach the middle schoolers the same doctrine for two months, then they go back to their classrooms for the book discussion while the senior highers come back to me for another 2 month doctrine study. And WAH-LAH, you’ve got yourself a rotating, non-drowsy, life applicational, Christ glorifying way to teach your students the creme de le creme – Systematic Theology.
You can search through all the FRAMEWORK files in the “Categories” section on the right-hand column.
Free files for my fellow youth pastor friends…
Overview of Why We Teach Systematic Theology to Students (mp3)
Sunday School 6 Year Plan (very rough version – all thoughts included)
