04/07/2026
&BelindaMallinak
Young people are more capable of grasping theology and doctrine than most admit. That’s why it is so disappointing that we so frequently skip this critical area of their spiritual life and development altogether.
For whatever reason, we tend to treat teens like children when it comes to Bible truth, even though we know they can handle more. We stick to the silly, the trite, the superficial, and the shallow, telling ourselves that any kind of “deep truth” will turn them away. But in reality, trivializing the Bible is much more likely to turn them away than digging in to discover the deep treasures of God’s Word.
Let me encourage you to test this for yourself. If you want an easy starting point, get a group of teens together and do a deep dive into the attributes of God. If it helps, do a word study. Use a concordance. Or, if it doesn’t violate your conscience, find one of the old confessions of faith such as the New Hampshire Confession of 1833 or the London Baptist Confession of 1689. Find their statements on God and dig into the Scripture proofs.
This past school year, our students studied Biblical Hermeneutics. Their parents reported that their kids were eating it up and that it was the most-discussed class around their respective dinner tables. The drawback to teaching kids how to interpret Scripture is that they quickly develop a bologna detector and, with it, a strong distaste for allegorical preaching. But when they love the Word, they can also be taught to approach garbage preaching with humility and to respond graciously when they believe the preacher has subverted the Word.
Young people especially enjoy Biblical apologetics. I think it’s our Academy's favorite class. Students dig into the question of God and learn to defend the faith against atheist challenges. They aren’t intimidated by terms like “presuppositional” or “transcendental.” I’ll never forget one particular class when everything clicked, Chosen race & Change Makers Family