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Identify one or two ways you can help prepare your students for attacks on their Christian faith.
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Preparing students to be able to defend their faith is an important component to include in lesson planning and classroom discussions. Memorizing scripture, incorporating the truths of the Bible into subject areas, and having age-appropriate conversations on common issues will help students build a biblical foundation, and seek to use the scripture to help them answer questions. As a Middle School teacher and one who teaches a course in logic, I educate my students on how to have appropriate, respectful debates and to make sure they are never critical, demeaning, or angry when having conversations with people that they disagree with. When topics popular in culture right now come up, we turn to scripture to first and foremost seek Godly wisdom and then discuss how we can approach having a God honoring conversation with others.
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I do devotionals with my own elementrary school children like my mom used to do when my siblings and I were younger. I see how confident they are in answering questions about the Bible and their Christian Faith. In this same way, I can prepare my students for the attacks on their Christian Faith by making sure we are constantly answering any question they have about life and God’s word. Recently I had a student tell me an opinion a family member shared with him about life after death. Unfortunately that was not an opinion that aligned with God’s word, so took the opportunity to show him how important it is that we ourselves read the Bible and apply what we are learning during our Bible lesson so that when even family teaches us something that goes against what the Bible teaches, we are ready to defend the truth with love because we are constantly immersed in it.
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I do devotionals with my own elementrary school children like my mom used to do when my siblings and I were younger. I see how confident they are in answering questions about the Bible and their Christian Faith. In this same way, I can prepare my students for the attacks on their Christian Faith by making sure we are constantly answering any question they have about life and God’s word. Recently I had a student tell me an opinion a family member shared with him about life after death. Unfortunately that was not an opinion that aligned with God’s word, so I told him how important it is that we ourselves read the Bible and apply what we are learning during our Bible lesson so that when even family teaches us something that goes against what the Bible teaches, we are ready to defend the truth with love because we are constantly immersed in it.
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I think its important to remind them that there WILL be attacks on their faith – so expect it and be ready for it. How can we be ready? By knowing God’s Word! We must be grounded in scriptural truths, so that when we are challenged or attacked, we can go back to the life-giving source that reminds us our faith is solid and trustworthy.
I think it would also be helpful to maybe role-play situations of where one could respond to an attack on their faith. This way it won’t blind-side them. They will have prepared and maybe even practiced how they would respond to such attacks. -
One way to help prepare students for attacks on the Christian faith is for them to be grounded in Scripture. If they do not know the truth, they will easily fall away from it. They should be given times to practice defending their faith and articulate a Biblical worldview on their own. Instead of teachers repeating it over and over again, give the students opportunities to articulate it themselves. When they get out into the world, they must be able to articulate their beliefs and proof of what they believe. We must prepare them to give well thought out, educated answers and be able to back up their answers with scripture.