Reversing Darwin

Series Description

In the dog-eat-dog world of middle school and high school, survival of the fittest often seems like the law of the land. And when we’re on the bottom of the food chain, this idea of a pecking order can start to affect the way we understand God—and maybe even the way we believe God sees us. But what if we were able to reverse this idea? What if something in Scripture allowed us to turn survival of the fittest on its head? Maybe we can start to flip the idea of “only the strong survive” and live in the reality that God has a bigger purpose and a better picture in mind—and this purpose and picture involves all of us—the strong, the weak, the in, the out, those you would expect, and those you wouldn't. Maybe in an effort to reverse Darwin, we need to start by understanding who God created us to be and how to live like it matters.

Session One: Survive
Bottom Line: When the world seems to favor the strong, God is present with the weak. 
Weak. Powerless. Abandoned. Overlooked. We’ve all felt this way at one time or another. And when we feel like the world doesn’t see us and we are less than fit to make it, we start to believe that only the strong survive. But God doesn’t work that way. Because God sees the hurt, the neglect and the times that we have been ignored and taken advantage of. God sees past the labels we give ourselves—and others. And because God sees, we are no longer powerless. Because God sees, God will act on our behalf.

Session Two: Classify
Bottom Line: We tend to see categories but Jesus came to abolish them.  
We’ve said that God sees and cares for the weak. But if this is true, doesn’t it mean that God favors the weak over the strong? It’s easy to set up oppositions; it’s easy to take sides. Especially when we are the ones who feel weak. We want God to be against the strong—against those who are hurting us. But in Jesus, we see the picture of a God who can see the weak and love the strong at the same time. Jesus is The Great Equalizer. And because of this, we can live beyond the “us versus them” mentality and start to see everyone we come in contact with as God’s favorite. 

Session Three: Adapt
Bottom Line: When we adapt to survive, we misrepresent ourselves—and God—to the world around us. 
Everyday our students are making choices. Choices about what to wear, what to say, where to go and how to act. And these choices often reflect the herd mentality that says they have to be, say and do the same as everyone else in order to survive. In other words, they have to adapt. And while this may feel like the best way to make it through middle school and high school, ultimately it isn’t. Because when we learn who God made us to be—nothing more and nothing less—we allow people to get a glimpse of who we really are. And, ultimately, who God is as well.

The Reversing Darwin downloadable podcast provides training for you and your volunteers regarding this series. You can download the podcast and make it available to your small group leaders either via a disc or electronically. Also, the series checklist provides suggestions on how to implement this series in your environment. Both the podcast and checklist are found in the "Getting Started” section of the Reversing Darwin series downloads.

Parent CUE: The Parent CUE for the Reversing Darwin series includes three sections: “Be a Student of What They are Learning,” which provides a way for parents to know what you are talking about this series, “Be a Student of Your Student,” which highlights the battle we all constantly fight to define who we are, both to ourselves and to the world around us and an “Action Point” which encourages parents to sit with their student and talk about some life moments that led them to redefine who they are. See the Parent CUE document in your series downloads for more information.

THE XP: The XP for the Reversing Darwin series involves creating the “perfectly adapted student” as a youth group and then talking about the cost of adapting to fit in.  ©2010 The reThink Group. All rights reserved.

hvarvell@wordalive.org