Teen Tuesday: Grace

This week's Teen Tuesday is about God's Grace. What is it? What does grace cover? This is a great discussion lesson! The Teen Tuesday lessons are written by Danielle Ringold, and they are being taught in the Wednesday evening Teen young ladies class.

There are many misconceptions out there about what grace is and isn’t. As I have gotten older, I feel like I have gained a better understanding of what it is, but I often look back on my teen years and wish I knew better then. Two of the biggest thoughts on what grace is that are wrong include this idea of a “free pass” and the idea that “I must be perfect.”

Since I grew up totally confused about what grace is, I decided to create a lesson for my teen class that addressed this topic and left nothing up to question. As usual we started with a brain warm up to get us thinking about the topic.

Then we talked directly about the idea of having to be perfect to find salvation and the lack of truth behind this idea.

One of the best parts of this lesson ended up being the discussion. I had selected four passages from the Bible to push our thinking, but the discussion was so rich we only ended up having time for three. In the lesson that I created, I included all of the questions that I used for this discussion. My advice when having class discussions with teenagers is to be direct, honest, and straight forward. Sometimes for me this means being vulnerable as I share past mistakes, but my hope is the teens I teach will learn from me.

The lesson plan included two more parts, but we ended up finishing only one. The final activity we did as a class was a graphic organizer about what grace is and isn’t. Like I said earlier, I wanted certain ideas about grace to be crystal clear by the end of the lesson.

Hello! My name is Danielle Ringold. You may recognize the children in the picture because my mom is Debbie Jackson, the owner of the Bible Fun for Kids website.