Vineyard Youth Curriculum

I AM: The Seven “I Am” Statements of Jesus

What better way to get to know Jesus than to study what he said about himself? In this 6 week series, we give Jesus a chance to tell us what He is like in His own words as recorded in the seven “I am” statements found in the Gospel of John. As you go through these statements, our hope is you’ll come to know Jesus more fully and give your life more fully and joyfully to him.

The Journey

Being a follower of Jesus, a disciple, is truly a journey of a lifetime. What does this journey look like practically? Over the four weekly lessons contained in this module we will explore the concepts of what it is to be a disciple of Jesus, spiritual formation through discipline, the Vineyard Value of everybody gets to play, and finally the great commission to go out into all the world and be disciples who make disciples.

Death to Selfie

Jesus gives a radical call to those who want to follow Him: deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow! How does that play out in our daily lives? In a culture obsessed with the SELF, how do we change the narrative in our lives, and learn to live lives of selflessness, service, compassion, and love? As followers of Jesus can we live in a counter-cultural way, and show others the love of Jesus by how we put Jesus first before ourselves in all ways?

Even Stranger Things

In the Netflix show “Stranger Things,” we join a little group of nerdy teenage friends on their adventures as they are drawn into a world of parallel dimensions, fearsome monsters, and a mysterious girl named Eleven, who has supernatural powers. Their experiences remind us of ordinary heroes in the Bible and even of ourselves as we follow Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit to turn the world upside down just as Jesus promised his disciples in John 14: “You will do even greater (and stranger) things than these!”

The Struggle is Real

You don’t have to look hard to find an article talking about how teens are struggling with mental health. Anxiety, depression, self hatred, and self harm are just a few of the ways that teens find themselves battling. The pandemic has only served to exacerbate an already seemingly ubiquitous issue. What help, solace, and hope does the Bible, and faith in Jesus, offer? In this four week teaching series, Christian shares from his personal experience of battling anxiety. He shares practical insights based in biblical truth that can be a daily help to each of us. Grab this curriculum today to start an honest and hope-filled conversation with your teens about faith and mental health.

Living on Mission

Two long standing values of the Vineyard are caring for the poor and evangelism. In this series we invited Marvin Suarez, who with his wife Carmen, planted the first Vineyard church in Puerto Rico. Through their passion for the poor, and their evangelism efforts, they have since planted three more. Marvin shares his passion, both from a scriptural foundation and from experience, for living missionally. We think your teens will find this topic relevant and engaging, as you discuss how your group can catch the vision for mission oriented faith.

Investing in Teen Leaders

We’ve taken the videos from the Virtual Project Timothy 2021, and turned them into a nine week video series in two parts. Part 1 is called the “Leadership Module” and Part 2 is the “Ministry Training Module.” Multiple great speakers address foundational issues of leadership, and how we can embrace God’s call on our lives. We have also created small group questions for each session. You can go through one or both modules – and you can use this for your whole group, or just with your teen leadership team!

Against the Flow

Let’s be honest. Following Jesus as a teenager in our culture is not easy right now. Christians are often portrayed as judgmental, hateful, or just irrelevant. Often teens who do follow Jesus are either so different that people can’t relate to them, or they look so much like the world, that you can’t tell the difference. How can a teenager follow Jesus in todays’ culture?

Spiritual Practices

The spiritual practices (or disciplines) are the “trellis” upon which the fruit of our spiritual life can grow. They are the daily connection to the love and life of Jesus that every believer longs for. Our hope is to introduce students to six of the practices so they can begin to experience the love of Jesus in powerful and personal ways. Each week introduces a new practice, and provides practical tips on how to start this life changing journey. The practices we cover are: Study, Silence & Solitude, Prayer, Confession, Sabbath, and Generosity.  

Navigating Emotions

Emotions are incredibly powerful. At times it can feel like we are at their mercy. This series encourages teens to look at their powerful emotions in light of the Bible. How can we learn to feel our emotions, but also not let them overwhelm us? How can we avoid the downward spiral of negative emotions, and instead find productive outlets that lead to a healthy emotional life? Obviously we can’t cover all of that in 4 weeks, but as we study the book of Esther together, we hope to give your teens a few tools for navigating the often troubled waters of emotions.

Prayer: Conversations with a Loving God

Discipleship to Jesus starts on the inside and grows outward. Our personal, interior life with God is the source from which flows our external life with others, as well as our missional life. Prayer is one of the key spiritual disciplines for our interior life and relationship with Jesus. In this curriculum we discuss how to make prayer a conversation with a God who loves you. We also give practical guidance on how and what to pray, and remind the reader regularly that prayer is all about relationship!

Relationship With Jesus

At the core of Christianity is our personal relationship with Jesus. In this curriculum we will dive into the difference between religion and relationship. We will look at how to foster our relationship with God, and how to receive the love that God has for us. The speakers work hard to build an excitement and a joy around growing in relationship with Jesus, rather than a burden or a “to-do” list of religious duties. They also address some of the hard work that goes into relationship if we really want to see a relationship grow. Our hope is that your teens will be inspired, and find some tools, to invest in a lifetime journey of growing closer to Jesus.

In Case You Missed It

The vision of this curriculum is to revisit some of the events teens have missed due to the pandemic, and look at them through the lens of biblical stories they may also have missed. Teachings do not build upon one another, but they are joined by the theme of what we have missed in life. We hope this helps you pastor your teens as they continue to navigate an uncertain world, with faith in a loving and faithful God.

Big Questions

Part of our discipleship as followers of Jesus is growing in our ability to think about our faith. As teens get older and go to college, they will face many challenging questions from a secular society. How will they answer? In these talks, Patrick attempts to give teens an understanding of some of the Big Questions they will face as they grow in their faith. We think these talks will produce great conversations for you and your teens to address the questions they are probably wondering about, but maybe haven’t asked yet.

It’s Not About Me

The fast pace of life, and our culture’s values, tend to draw inward to focus on ourselves. God calls us to love him, love others, and live outside of a “me/I focus.” This series will look at what it means to live selflessly and, taking the focus off ourselves, to live as Christ commands, with love toward others. We will dig into practical ways to put others first remembering “Its not all about me.”

Who Am I? Forming Your Identity in Christ

For anyone who has ever been a teenager, you know that discovering “who you are” is a huge part of that time of life. What do I care about? What defines “me?” Who are my friends? How do I want to live my life in relationship to all that’s going on around me? To that end, we have endeavored to create a starting point for this discussion in your youth group. This certainly doesn’t come close to being exhaustive. But we think it lays a foundation of the most important part of our identity: who God says we are.

Inside Out

Most of us are familiar with the main figures in the Old Testament, but how does that help us today? What can we possibly learn from the mistakes of those that have come before us? This curriculum is a character study from 1 & 2 Samuel and Kings. In this study we will learn how to live well from the “Inside Out” by looking at the successes and failures of people like Samuel, David and Solomon. These are high powered and extremely down to earth people who make the same core mistakes that we often make today.

Why Read the Bible?

For many teens, reading the Bible can be a confusing and boring exercise. However, the practice of reading the Bible is one of the most foundational practices that followers of Jesus have used for millennia to draw near to God. This curriculum is aimed at helping teens grow in their understanding of the Word of God by answering some of the most often asked questions about the Bible. It then will teach them two methods for reading and applying the Bible, in hopes of launching them on the lifelong practice of reading the Bible.

Empowered By The Spirit

One of the core values of the Vineyard is “Partnering With the Holy Spirit.” We want our teens to begin to learn how to sense when the Spirit is moving in someone’s life and calling them to partner with him. A question we ask a lot in the Vineyard is, “what is the Father doing?” This course is designed to help teens grow in their awareness of when He is working, their confidence in God’s gifts inside of them, and in their boldness to join Him in ministry to others. There is practical teaching as well as opportunities for trying out what they are learning. We think that God is going to do great things in and through your teens as you give Him space to work supernaturally in your group!

Sermon on the Mount

Part of the mandate that Jesus gave his followers was to make disciples and teach them to obey his teachings. The Sermon on the Mount is a super relevant and accessible place to start with young people wanting to learn more about the teachings of Jesus. It also contains so many “hooks” that they have most likely heard of before, like the Lord’s Prayer and The Beatitudes, that it provides an easy on-ramp no matter their religious background. These passages are full of ripe discussions, difficult topics, and deep encouragement. We hope you enjoy the journey through Jesus’ most famous collection of teachings!

Worship

God is eager to be known and experienced by all. In response to God’s initiative, we value the life-changing power of the experience of His presence. The primary place where that relationship is nurtured and developed is in the act of worship—both private and corporate. Our teens are constantly pulled in numerous cultural directions that are vying for their attention. In the midst of the fast-paced visual marketplace these students are growing up in, we want them to experience God in a way that flows out of a life of worship and affects all aspects of their lives, so that all division between the secular and the sacred vanish. Our prayer is that they experience intimacy with the Father in a way that changes them forever.

Risk Takers

In the Vineyard we believe that faith is spelled R-I-S-K! Whether it’s praying for healing, sharing our faith, or volunteering to feed the hungry, acting on our faith often requires a level of risk. Left to our own comfort zones, we tend to mostly take care of ourselves and avoid challenging situations. However, being a follower of Jesus requires us to be stretched and to put others first! In this series we will tackle several obstacles that stand in our way when God asks us to step out in faith.

We Are One

In the Vineyard we believe that God cares equally about every race, ethnicity, and gender. We believe that every individual is equal in His sight. But a question that many of us still ask is a simple but important one: How do we do life with people who are different from us? How do we interact with those who have different cultures, perspectives, and values than we do? Our goal in this series is to explore questions like these on a deeper, more personal level. Our hope is that this series will challenge your teens and give them the tools and passion necessary to better embrace those around them. 

Community Starts With You

Studies indicate that community and relationships are key facets that connect adolescent students to a youth ministry context, as well as lasting church engagement.  The call of the church has been and always will be to create a community and family of God – and expression of God’s love. In this curriculum we want to take the opportunity to discuss some of the realties, difficulties, and hurdles to experiencing community and relationship during this phase of life.  The goal of this study is to understand the role of community as well as the barriers that often keep us from “belonging.”

Hearing God’s Voice

In the Vineyard we believe that learning to hear God’s voice, and living in submission and obedience to it, is a foundational skill we all should grow in throughout our lives. Sometimes hearing God’s voice can start to feel intimidating though, or like it is only for certain people. In this curriculum book we want to give teens the opportunity to not only learn about how God wants to speak to them because he loves them, but also to experience it and grow in confidence. Our prayer is that this will lead to a lifetime of living in communion with the voice of their Heavenly Father.

The Kingdom and You

In the Vineyard we see the theology and practice of the Kingdom of God as core to who we are. It is foundational to all that we believe. Reality is that the topic of ‘the Kingdom of God’ can seem abstract, and may be hard to understand how it affects everyday life, for younger students. In this set of lessons, our hope is to give pre and early teens an opportunity to learn about the theology and practice of the Kingdom of God through sets discussions and activities that will help students both learn about and experience the kingdom by way of the parable of the soil from Matthew 13.