There are thousands of resources that are available to choose from when deciding what to teach to students and how to train youth leaders. What if there was a resource that could do both of these at the same time? This is why Tony Payne’s study titled You, Me, and the Bible is a valuable choice for your student ministry.

This self-proclaimed “reading guide to the six central ideas of the Bible” can be useful to teach students the big themes throughout the Scriptures.  One benefit of You, Me, and the Bible is that it can be helpful for students who don’t know very much about the Bible and those who have been raised in the church and feel like they know a lot of information.   Each section contains two biblical passages that help educate those in the group about the storyline of Scripture. This is important because knowing the flow of Scripture enables the reader to better understand how the Bible fits together and what the main point of it is. 

Each of the six sections contains introductory comments about each passage, questions to use directly about the biblical text, and life application questions. This format gives enough flexibility for the leaders to design each session for the students in their group.  The format also enables students to both answer and ask questions that can better help them understand the Bible. 

One beneficial way to use this material could be for you to take your leaders through it before using it with students. This gives the leaders an opportunity to grow, ask questions, and begin to think through ways to communicate the story line of Scripture to their students. There are also free videos online that compliment each study. These help leaders better prepare how they will teach each lesson.

Leaders can benefit from teaching this material because it gives them the opportunity to grow in communicating the themes of the Bible while strengthening their own knowledge at the same time.  Equipping leaders with biblical knowledge multiplies the ministry of the youth worker by unleashing the leaders to raise the level of biblical literacy in your group.  

Matthias Media, the publisher of this resource, has other studies and books that can work well with education and equipping both students and leaders. Go to www.matthiasmedia.com for more information.