Introduction

SHARING YOUR FAITH

HIGH SCHOOL

How Early Christians Shared Their Faith
Be Ready to Share Your Faith—1
Be Ready to Share Your Faith—2
Sharing the Bible Story—1
Sharing the Bible Story—2
How to Explain There Is a God
How to Explain the Bible Is From God
How to Explain Salvation by Faith
How to Explain Baptism
How to Explain the Departure and Return
How to Explain Denominationalism
How to Explain about Instruments in Worship
Getting into Action

Introduction to eBibleStudy.org

The Oklahoma Christian University College of Biblical Studies is happy to welcome you to eBibleStudy.org. We provide this service free of charge to churches, schools, those doing home schooling, and any others involved in Bible instruction. We make available to you for free downloading a guide for teaching on how to teach important Bible topics. The instructions include objectives for the classes, the content to be taught, suggestions for how to teach the material, ideas on evaluation, and additional resources the teacher might want to use. If handouts, worksheets, or visuals are suggested, they are usually supplied. While each of the 13-lesson sets has its own unique style, each follows a similar format. The College of Biblical Studies is providing this material as a service to improve Bible instruction wherever it is done. Most of the authors are regular Bible teachers at Oklahoma Christian University. Dr. Lynn McMillon, Dean of the College of Biblical Studies, and Dr. Stafford North, Professor of Bible, are co-editors of the series. Three years of studies, twelve quarters of materials, are being prepared for high school, and five years of studies, twenty quarters of materials, are being prepared for adults. Junior high school materials are also being planned for a little later.

The general guidelines for use of this material are as follows:

Anyone may download the material from the internet site free of charge.
The user is free to make copies for his/her own use in a church or other setting for Bible instruction.
The material is copyrighted and no one may sell this material or make copies beyond the number needed for his/her own use in teaching.
Anyone wishing to make substantive changes in the material before using and/or wishing to translate the material into another language should request and receive permission from the editors before proceeding.

The plans for each lesson are built around a 45- minute class period. Those with a longer or shorter time will need to make some adjustments. The materials seek to make the classes biblical, interesting, and practical. They are especially designed for the age group to which they are directed: adult, senior high school, junior high school. We invite your comments about the materials and suggestions for improvement. Please send your thoughts to the editors at www.eBibleStudy.org.

This course on Sharing Your Faith is a very important one for students in high school. If we can set our young people on the path of reaching out to those around them with the gospel, they will likely continue to be evangelistic for a lifetime. There is nothing the church needs more than to be committed to bringing others to Christ.

This series of lessons seeks to motivate students to share their faith and to teach them how to do it. Some lessons deal with methods; other lessons deal with what to teach people. Some lessons ask students to do role-playing and others ask them to practice teaching a lesson to someone they know.

At the end of each lesson is a suggested assignment. Our Bible class students will learn much more if they do some work outside of class. The assignments are not long, but they will help keep the students thinking about the subject during the week. For each class meeting after the first, a brief quiz is suggested. This will take about three or four minutes but if you are able to get students to take it seriously, this method will greatly enhance their learning. You may want to have students turn in their papers for you to grade and you can keep individual grades by student. Another plan, the one noted in the lesson plans, is to let each student grade his/her own paper and record the grade anonymously on a sheet handed around after the test. Thus, a class average can be kept but not grades by student. Each test is worth 100 points. Some student or an assistant teacher can average the grades and report the class average. A grade sheet is included with Lesson 2 (the first time you would need it) on which you can record the class average for each lesson. An alternate plan is to try and hand out the quiz sheets as students enter the room or about five minutes before class starts so students can compete them before time for class to start. You can give out the answers after class begins but would save a few minutes of class time this way. You might motivate your students by offering a class pizza party if the class average is 80 or more for the course. Or you may think of a better motivation for your group. Try to use both internal and external motivation—that is, help students to want to know because of the good it will do them and the church, and help them want to learn because of a reward of a party, an outing, a candy bar or whatever you think will move them to learn.

For each of the lessons, there is a written “lesson text” available by lesson number through the eBibleStudy.org Website. Tell your students about these and how to log on. There are two good reasons for students to access these materials outside of class. If they were in class for the lesson but want to review it or pick up more details than you had time to give in class, they can look at the lesson on the Website. Also if they missed a class meeting, they can go to the written text on that lesson and get information they missed. If a Review/Notes sheet goes with the lesson a student missed, get that sheet to the student who missed before he/she looks at the lesson text. Filling in this worksheet will be a good way for a student who missed to be caught up and ready for the quiz on the following Sunday.

In addition to printing out the teacher’s lesson plan for each class meeting, you may wish to print out the lesson text for each lesson. You can use it as a reference while you are preparing your lesson since, in most cases, it will have more information on the lesson than is included in the teacher’s lesson plan. Also, if you wish to do more lecture and less question and answer, as the lesson plans are primarily set up, then you can use the lesson text as the basis for developing your lecture.

You might wish to make a Student Notebook of the Review/Notes sheets and other handouts and provide them all to students at the first class session. This will save time in each class meeting since you will not have to hand out materials each period and it gives students their materials in advance so, in case they miss, they already have the sheet for make-up work. Also since students would have their Review/Notes sheet in a notebook they are more likely to have it available for study between class meetings than if they have stray sheets. And the students are more likely to keep these materials for future reference if they are in notebook form. Of course, if students take their notebooks home with them, they may forget to bring them back and so will not have what they need in class. If you do make a notebook, keep some extra sheets in class for visitors and for those who don’t have their notebooks in class.

The plan for the use of time in each class meeting requires you to keep moving pretty rapidly. The lesson plans assume a 45- minute time period and closer to an hour would be even better. You may have the opportunity to teach this material to both the Sunday morning and the Wednesday night class at the same quarter. That would give you more time for devotionals and other class business and also allow more time for review, discussion, role-playing, and reporting on what students have been trying in sharing their faith. If you find you need more time than the class plan allows, you can make adjustments. You may have to shorten the introductory things, leave a little out of each lesson, or leave out one or two of the lesson topics so you can take more time on fewer subjects. You or some other teacher might work in the lessons omitted in another way. The plans for each class meeting are developed on the assumption that you will want to use the question/answer method for most of the classes. Thus, frequent questions are given for you to ask the class—preceded by a “Q.” If you wish to do more lecture and less question/answer, then you can adjust by using fewer of the questions and putting more in lecture format. This will make the lesson go a little faster but will provide for less involvement by the students. You will need to decide, as you prepare to teach each lesson, how you wish to balance the question/answer and lecture format.

You will also need to decide, on many of the lessons, how you want to present the suggested visuals—chalkboard, markerboard, overhead, or PowerPoint. PowerPoint slides are supplied for downloading on the lessons where they are thought appropriate. If you wish to use overheads on those lessons, you can make them by downloading the PowerPoint on “pure black and white” and then using the resulting printouts to make transparencies. If you are using the overhead a lot, you may want to use blank transparencies to write on them what is suggested for the chalkboard. For Lesson 7, a videotape has been prepared with some interesting archaeological finds on it that tie to the lesson. To obtain that VHS format videotape, you may send $10 to cover the cost of the tape and mailing to North Institute, Oklahoma Christian University, Box 11000, Oklahoma City, OK 73136. The tape will be sent immediately. Using this tape will add good interest to that lesson. If you do not choose to use the tape, however, the basic information about the items on the tape is given so you can present it orally. The Review/Notes sheets have still pictures of the items.

The following general suggestions might be helpful in teaching a high school class.

Keep the students sold on the benefits of what they can learn in this class. You will have to sell at the first and continue to sell all the way through the quarter.
Encourage students to do some out-of-class study and preparation for the quizzes. If the students will get into a good learning mode, this will be a very productive study.
Keep the students involved in the learning as much as possible. Let them answer questions, make reports on what they have tried, use worksheets, do role-playing, and whatever else you can think of to get them involved.
Keep the class moving. While you don’t want to seem rushed, give the class a sense of pace.
You may want to meet with some of the opinion leaders in the class prior to the start of the quarter. At this time you could ask for their help in building interest in the class, in being willing to do outside assignments, in accepting the idea of a weekly quiz, and in the general approach to the class. If several key class members are taken “behind the curtain” before the class starts and you can get them on board, that will go a long way towards good acceptance by others.

This course in Sharing Your Faith is a very important one. It will help the students to be more evangelistic and this can help the entire church to be more evangelistic. It will ground them in some basic doctrines and that is very important these days. High school students study some tough subjects in their regular schools and we ought to challenge them with some good learning in their Bible classes. Our best wishes as you teach this important subject.

Download Worksheets

Quiz Record

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