Testing the Youth

I've been the Youth Director of our church since early August.

When I was first hired, I told the youth that they would be tested on their knowledge at some point. From the reaction I got from the group, the idea of being tested on what's taught during the youth meetings must be a radical idea!

Since this is the start of a new year and I have been working with them for a few months, I decided now would be a good time to administer the test. So during the past couple of weeks I've been trying to catch up to everyone to test them.

I have wanted to do this so I can see what they know -and what they don't. I am using a simple test I found on CARM.org. (My 8 year old son aced it on his first try!) Maybe I'm a lunatic, but if they are being tested on what they learn in school, why not test them on what they're supposed to be learning at church? I figure it can't hurt!

The majority of my group is made up of younger teens, most have just recently moved up from AWANA and are currently in middle school. Once I finally get everyone tested, I am going to give back their graded tests and we will be going over them in class. Overall they have done fairly well, but I have noticed there's a few questions which most of them are marking wrong, so I definitely want to address those questions in detail.

One question that several have been getting wrong is about evolution: many have marked "God used evolution to bring man into existence"! (For that I'd like to thank the public education system!) Not to worry, we'll be killing that myth very soon!

They don't know it yet, but there will probably be many more tests to come. I want to see how well they are paying attention and how well I am conveying the information to them.