How can you get your students to ask and discuss difficult faith-related questions?

/ mkessenburg
I want students to flourish in terms of passionate purpose. My deep hope is that students are experiencing…
1. Personal goal setting.
2. Making a positive impact for Jesus.
3. The freedom to ask and discuss difficult faith-related questions (see Construct: Questioning, p. 14).
4. A living curriculum (staff) that models Christ-centered passionate purpose. 

This blog post addresses #3 above.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Get your students asking and discussing difficult faith-related questions! Why?

  • Because Jesus, the Master Teacher, asked and discussed difficult faith-related questions.
  • Because asking and discussing difficult questions helps students think, take ownership of their faith commitment, and deepen their understanding of God, His world, and their place in it.
  • Because when students don’t ask and discuss difficult questions, they can get frustrated, doubtful, and tired of Christianity.
  • Because getting students to ask and discuss difficult questions is a time-test, research-based best practice (see Construct: Questioning, p. 14).

How can you get your students asking and discussing difficult questions? Things that have helped me include…

(1) Cultivating a classroom culture of inquiry where students exploring their own questions drives learning. I work to make it normal, expected, safe, even celebrated for my students to ask questions—including hard, faith-related ones. 

(2) Modeling humility (intellectual and spiritual) and an eagerness to learn. When a question is difficult, I acknowledge that fact and the braveness of asking it. I do research and bring in resources to help the class process the question and develop answers.    

(3) Modeling vulnerability and transparency by sharing questions I’ve wrestled with, for example: How do I trust the goodness and power of God in a world where so much pain happens? How do divine sovereignty and human responsibility relate? What do I do with unanswered prayer? How do I forgive? Is God in control when the world seems chaotic?

(4) Using essential questions to direct inquiry in every unit, for example: 

  1. Who am I? 
  2. Who is my neighbor? 
  3. What’s the significance of words? 
  4. What’s wrong with the world? 
  5. So what? Now what? 
  6. How do writers reflect the image of God? 
  7. How do people build or break shalom? 
  8. What is human dignity and why does it matter? 
  9. What do I do with what I learn? 
  10. How do poets help me see truth? 
  11. What are people searching for? 
  12. What is empathy and why is it important? 
  13. Why would a reasonable, rational, normal person do that? 
  14. What is love and how is it related to infatuation and to romance? 

Here are some related resources:

What about you? What happens when students ask and discuss difficult faith-related questions? What happens when they don’t? How can you get your students to ask and discuss difficult faith-related questions? 

Get flourishing!

Kim