I first met Amber when she attended one of our ministry’s summer mission trips as a guest. Every night, when our mission team gathered to debrief, Amber rapidly would ask a series of questions. Wrestling with those questions throughout the week fueled tremendous spiritual growth in Amber.

Amber’s eagerness to question her faith during this trip made me wonder if this was a new phenomenon for her. Eventually, I learned that it was. In church, Amber was taught primarily through sermons designed to tell her what to believe and seldom given the opportunity to question anything she was told. Even on rare occasions when she had the chance to raise questions, Amber typically chose not to because she had been taught that questions were a sign of doubt, and doubt a sign of weakness. Rather than appear weak, Amber let her questions fester until eventually, her faith grew stagnant.

Telling or Asking?

Unfortunately, Amber’s story is not the only one. Today, many youth feel much more comfortable being told what to believe than being challenged to figure it out personally. Perhaps this is one reason, according to some denominations, an alarming 50 percent of graduates either fall away from their faith or their faith communities upon entering college.

In order to more effectively impact our students’ short- and long-term faith development, I believe youth workers need to start teaching in a new way. Rather than tell students what to think, we need to use questions to teach our students how to think critically about their faith, then give them a safe environment in which to ask questions. Rather than try to answer all these questions, we need to encourage our students who have unresolved questions to continue wrestling with their faith and take ownership of it—an introduction to apologetics.

Such a philosophy has been present in other cultures for centuries. The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates used a series of thought-provoking questions to challenge his students to examine the validity of their opinions and beliefs, something now referred to as the Socratic Method.

The Jewish culture also values questions and debate. One example of this is the Midrash. Author Judith M. Kunst explains in her book, The Burning Word, “Midrash reads the Hebrew Bible not for what is familiar but for what is unfamiliar, not for what’s clear, but for what’s unclear; then wrestles with the text, passionately, playfully and reverently. Midrash views the Bible as one side of a conversation, started by God, containing an implicit invitation, even a command, to keep the conversation going.”

Jesus Probed with Questions

It seems this Jewish value also influenced Jesus’ response to questions during His ministry.

As Brian McLaren says in his book Adventures in Missing the Point, “The questions the Bible raises in your mind may be more important than the answers you find in it. Ever notice, when Jesus was asked a question, how often He answered with another question?”