By Karen L. Willoughby
Life can be challenging in an urban environment, acknowledged Frank Williams, pastor since 2013 of Bronx Baptist Church and Wake Eden Church, both in the Bronx, the northernmost borough of New York City.
The churches try to meet the needs of the community. In addition to an annual health fair, the churches feed the homeless with a soup kitchen and the hungry with a food pantry. They also provide local children with education through an 11-hour-a-day daycare, preschool, and grade school.
“Some of the children coming into the school environment are carrying emotional baggage they don’t yet understand,” Williams said. “It becomes a part of the learning experience to teach them skills on how to process their environment.”
As these children grow into young adults, the emotional baggage they are carrying often grows even larger. Lifeway Christian Resources has created YOU curriculum to meet the unique needs of young adults—teens and 20-somethings.
“Life in an urban setting is fast-paced,” said Beverly Sonnier, editor of the YOU curriculum. “It’s a convergence of so many different things: worldviews, religions, cultural traditions, lifestyles. Those are the things that so often collide and seldom connect.
“But as the body of Christ in those densely populated areas, Christians have to be the ones to begin the effort of connecting and bridging these students to those things that really matter,” Sonnier continued. Lifeway developed the YOU curriculum to do just that.
Pauline Heslop, discipleship director of Bronx Church, happened on the YOU curriculum when she attended the Black Church Leadership and Family Conference week at Ridgecrest Conference Center near Asheville, North Carolina.
“I was looking for a tool that would be different,” said Heslop, a pediatrician with a medical doctorate and a theology degree. “This curriculum asks specific questions, and based on conversations with our young people, I realized it would be a good tool.
“After a year of using it, I thought it really stimulated dialogue,” Heslop continued. “It is biblically based, but unlike some of the other materials we have used, it’s really applicable to life as we live it today.”
On one occasion, Heslop, teaching through the curriculum, told the students God is always present. A young woman began to recognize God’s leading in her life, Heslop said. “She has a degree in marketing, but decided she wants to go to Bible school.”
After going to a Wednesday evening study, where the YOU curriculum was used, one young man decided he wanted to be baptized and use his gifts in ministry, Heslop said. “He’s beginning to trust the Lord more. He has come to the realization that God has called him, and that God is in control of everything.”
Heslop said she appreciated how the topics sparked discussion and stimulated interaction. “People opened up more than I had seen them do in a good while,” she said. “They are eager to participate and I am eager to see that.”
The YOU Bible study curriculum is “biblically sound, culturally relevant, and transformational for adults of all ages and stages of spiritual maturity,” Sonnier said. “YOU Bible studies help bridge and bring together all these different ethnicities and cultures. The commonality is Jesus.”
The 6:30 p.m. Wednesday class at Bronx Church that used YOU in its “Exploring God” class was immediately followed at 7:30 p.m. by an expository Bible study group, and most of the “seekers” stayed for that study, too.
The Exploring God class brings together people who have some working knowledge of God or the Bible, as well as those who have nothing more than an awareness that Christmas and Easter are somehow related to Christianity.
“What’s interesting is that it was not unusual for them to be there at 10 p.m., still studying the Scriptures,” Williams said. “Dr. Heslop will tell me, ‘They’re hungry for the Word.’ It’s a blessing to see that.”
The YOU curriculum appeals to urban young adults for a number of reasons, including its design and layout.
“The pictures you see reflect what you’d see in an urban environment,” Williams said. “Visually, it’s impressive, and that makes an important connection. The way the information is laid out is appealing. You can follow it: The content of the material, the things it addresses, and the way it addresses those topics, it all works together.”
The graphic appeal of the YOU curriculum is intentional, Sonnier said. The designers are young millennials who have been reared in multicultural environments.
“The major focus is strictly on Jesus and the gospel,” the editor continued. “The Word of God never changes, but the way you present it does.
“Graphic images of ‘me’ will draw my attention because they indicate, ‘Oh, I’m included,’” Sonnier said.
The YOU curriculum is not for any specific ethnic group, but for the totality of people who live in a multiethnic, multicultural setting, the editor said. Illustrations might be of an elderly black man, an Asian couple, or perhaps mixed-race basketball games.
“We’ve got quite a few traditional Anglo churches that use the YOU curriculum,” Sonnier said. “They’re noticing a definite shift in their community, and they understand the need to evangelize people near and far.”
Karen L. Willoughby
Karen is a freelance writer in Mapleton, Utah.
