Faith Out Loud is youth curriculum written by Cumberland Presbyterians for Cumberland Presbyterians (although members of other denominations within the Reformed tradition will likely find it useful as well). Each lesson is designed to invite young people to think deeply about Christianity and explore ways to incorporate their faith into their daily lives... in other words, to live their faith out loud.

The Bible contains many inspiring stories from which teachers, preachers, and individual readers draw life-guiding principles. The Bible contains many beautiful passages, inspiring readers to memorize them or turn them into art in every medium from needlepoint to photography. The Bible contains many deep truths that both professional and amateur theologians have mulled over for centuries.

The 13 lessons in this book don't deal with those.

Instead, these lessons deal with the weird and crazy stuff in the Bible: monsters, rules about cleanliness, curses, bizarre sexual references, people having strange visions, outlandish ways people died, references to bodily waste, and other shocking stuff that youth will love discussing.

Also included is one lesson on things everybody thinks are in the Bible when they really aren't, and one lesson on everyday sayings that have their origin in the Bible.

Weird? Yup. Crazy? Yup. And the amazing thing is -- even all these weird and crazy parts of the Bible help teach us to live our faith out loud!

This resource is for the leader. It has reproducible handouts for students. There is no student book. If you have more than one leader for a class, however, you might want to get a copy of this resource for each one.