What's the Deal With Brian Schulenburg?

I've yet to meet Brian but I'm looking forward to it when we get the chance. I discovered his blog a few months ago and have enjoyed it and our occasional interaction.

Brian's a real youth pastor who happens to have written a couple of books and speaks occasionally. He's not a writer or speaker who happens to be in youth ministry. Big difference in my mind. I'll let you decide who among the Youth Ministry Guru's that are out there, are which.

I bought What's the Deal with. . . a couple of weekends ago when I was at The CORE. Gotta love all the Invert Books being 50% off @ $5 and this one selling for just $7. I bought one invert book for each of my 5 students who were there.

Our Sunday night high school group is the ideal setting for using this sort of book, I believe. We typically have 10-15 high schoolers on Sunday nights, maybe less, maybe more but it's in that range.

I've been doing less lessons and more discussion on topics on Sunday nights for the past 2 months anyways, so this is the perfect fit for what they've become use to. I want to give the student 4 points and an application, I like that. I know 100% where we're going and I think they need to know the truths I have to share but it's better when we discuss topics with me guiding the discussion rather than dominating the distribution of information.

We discussed 3 questions in about 30-40 minutes. The format for the 500 questions is "What's the deal with TOPIC?" and then one follow up question. We talked about the Bible, Denominations and Homosexuality. You know, the easy ones.

It's best if you plan out which questions you want to cover an have an idea of where your convictions are and definitely where the church's convictions are. You do not want some wacked out idea that a student shares to come across as the official position of the church if it's totally opposed to what your church actually believes.

They joy of using the Socratic Teaching teaching method is that when students form a conviction, it's from within and not just a command to blindly follow. The intertweaving of epistemology and sound theology is vital to any youth ministry and Brian's new book is a great tool to help you do that, but it won't do it for you.

In case you don't have the ca$hola now to buy What's the Deal with. . . . you can use some of Grahame's great FREE Discussion Starters.