Young Adults and Kids Church

Today I taught two different lessons at Trinity Baptist Church.

At 9:45, it was the Young Adults Fight for the Faith class looked at 2 Timothy 3.

At 11:00, it was the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-grade children's church lesson was 1 Samuel 27 -31.

Now the two lessons may not seem to have a lot in common, BUT they do.

Just read on.

One of the resources we are using in the Fight for the Faith class this quarter is the book Deconstructing the Christian Faith. Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett offer the following definition of faith deconstruction: "a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without regarding Scripture as a standard."

Today's lesson was on why people deconstruct their faith.  A couple of the reasons the authors offer are suffering,  doubt, and difficult passages of scripture.

Before getting into what we talked about as a response to these crisis events, let me share with you what the 1st-3rd-grade children's church passage was.
We didn't discuss the details of 1st Samuel 27-31.  Here they are.

In chapter 27, David flees from Saul to the Philistines.  David doesn't just find a place for a short rest among his enemies.  He lived there a year and four months.  But he didn't just live there. According to 27:8 -12, David made many raids in which he would not leave a man or woman alive (v. 9) and report back to the Philistines.

In chapter 28, Saul disguises himself to see a medium about speaking to the deceased Samuel.

In chapter 29, the Philistine king, Achish, said to David, "I know that you are as blameless in my sight as an angel of God. "

In chapter 30, the Amalekites took David's TWO wives 

In chapter 31, the Philistines defeated Israel, and Saul died.

In summary, David and the army killed men and women. God uses a witch to summon Samuel and get a message for Saul. David, the king of Palestine, praises David, and God uses the enemies of Israel to defeat Israel.  

These are hard accounts for even adults to understand.  "When telling their deconstruction stories, many people reveal a deep sense of disillusionment with the darker and violent stories told in the Bible"  (Childers & Barnett, 91).

The children's church memory verse is 2 Samuel 7:22a, "Therefore you are great, O Lord God. For there is none like you, and there is no god besides you..."

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