Reading the Bible with teenage girls

On Friday afternoons I find myself sitting in McDonald's, a cup of tea in hand, listening intently to girls ten years younger than myself. This precious hour is one of the highlights of my week. I love meeting with the teenage girls from church, chatting about life and God and how the two mesh, reading the Bible and praying for them. Seeing their love for God grow and their understanding of his word deepen fills me with so much joy and spurs me on.

But doing this hasn’t always been easy for me. It has taken me a long time to work out how I can meet with teenage girls, and what to do when we get together. I thought I’d share some of the things I think through and do.

Location: I find a place that is local, public (for child protection and accountability reasons) and low-cost. Often this is the nearest McDonald's, although cafes, public parks and libraries also work. I try to avoid distractions, such as super loud noise and screens, and find somewhere school friends or other students won’t disturb us.

Timing: I spend roughly an hour with them. I mentally break this into three 20-minute blocks: one for catching up, one for reading the Bible together and one for praying. This isn’t rigid though, if they want more Bible time then great!

Reading the Bible: Over the past few years, I’ve used several methods of reading the Bible with different girls. Here are some of my favourites:

• Reading ahead of the congregation: If we are looking at Joshua 2 that night at youth group, I try and read the same passage. It gives us a good starting point and teaches them how to prepare for church.


• A Bible reading method: For some books of the Bible, the Swedish method works wonderfully as a way of exploring what the passage means. I read through Colossians using the Swedish Method with a teenage girl and it provided a lot of fruitful discussion. For teenagers who want to wrestle with the text a bit more, I use COMA (Context, Observations, Meaning, Application) to teach them how to understand the Bible for themselves. These methods are helpfully outlined in detail in David Helm’s book One-to-one Bible reading.


• Prewritten Bible studies: I have found the Daily Reading Bibles and also Short Steps for Long Gains (Youth Edition) to be a great length for some biblical discussion. I recently worked through Short Steps with some girls and we found it helpful for looking at what the Bible has to say on different topics such as assurance, friendship, gossip and more.

End date: I have 10 girls in my girls bible study and I want to meet up with them all at some point. I find having a fixed amount of time in mind useful. Sometimes I will meet with a girl for 10 weeks in a row, sometimes I will meet once a month for a year. I attempt to be flexible with this period of time as well. Some girls will not be interested in meeting up regularly and so will pull the plug after 2 or 3 weeks whereas other girls will need you for longer periods of time.

These are just some of the things that I think and do. What advice would you give?