P R E F A C E

My Testimony

It was every five year old’s dream choice. Did I want to get up in the morning and go to church where a bunch of stuff old people talked about things I didn’t care about, or stay home and watch cartoons? OK, maybe it wasn’t a choice. At age five, I stopped going to church. My mom, a self-proclaimed agnostic, refused to have a son that was forced into a religion. As the years passed, I made few trips back through the double wooden doors and the occasional visit with a friend or for a Christmas special summarized my church activities. It wasn’t until junior high, when puberty unleashed its full force, girls lost their cooties and became objects of lust, and being popular mattered that I returned to the pews. All of the “popular” kids at my school were going to church and involved in their youth group. They would spend every Wednesday night there, talk about all of the hot girls they had met on church mission trips, one kid had even snuck upstairs to the youth room during a service and received head from a girl a year above us. Church instantly became the place I wanted to be. So I went to my dad and told him I wanted to start going to church again. He was thrilled and we began to look for a church to attend. I was voting for where my friends went… did I mention the hot girls? However, my dad had different plans and we soon ended up attending a small bible church that he felt would offer the most in a growing relationship with Christ. Unfortunately, the hot girls were few and taken. I did not feel at home within the youth group, not that they didn’t try to make me feel welcome, I just didn’t know any of them like I did my friends from school. Within a few years, I turned sixteen and got a job where I worked on Sundays. Church became an occasional visit once again and I soon began losing faith. It is about at this point that my story in Chapter 1 picks up. I severely began to doubt my faith and hated my life. When I graduated high school and went to college, I was seeking a home once again, a place to fit in. I found it among the parties and binge drinking. Once you got drunk enough, everyone became your friend. I found myself in a relationship with a girl that was entirely based on sex and when we broke up that Christmas break, I was devastated. I returned to school with the intention of picking up right where I had left off, parting and meeting girls. One of the girls that I met in a class held my attention more than any of the rest however, and we soon began dating exclusively. She had been raised Catholic and had grown bored with the rules and fakeness of the sect in which she had been raised. She had met a girl at a local church that had a real, living relationship with Christ and decided that is something she wanted too. I somehow got caught up in that and about two months later, was attending church on my own, reading my bible once again, etc. Before this point, I had slept with multiple girls, messed around with even more, been drunk more times than I remembered. I was the exact person that I wanted to be when I was in junior high. Yet, when I finally was that person, I wasn’t happy. I knew that I shouldn’t be living that life, but thought that I was only young once thought if I didn’t do that stuff then, I would regret it later. My realization came one day while I was reading my bible and stumbled across 1 Timothy 4:12. If you haven’t read it, go now and check it out. That girl and I broke up at the end of that semester, but not before I had signed up to work at a Christian youth camp outside of Austin. That camp was the best thing to ever happen to me. It provided me a safe environment for me to grow in my knowledge of God and in my relationship with Him. I made up my mind of where I stood on certain issues, finished the new testament, developed many deep friendships that to this day are some of the strongest friendships that I have, and came to a fuller understanding of the relationship that I was now involved in. I came back to UT determined to make a difference for the kingdom… and soon was rudely awakened. Life wasn’t simply those that were doing right and those that were doing wrong. I discovered that each relationship with Christ is personal and looks different for each person involved in that unique relationship. It was at this point that I decided to write this study guide, as much of help for Christians as non-Christians. It is designed to show a real relationship with Christ and the uniqueness of that. I hope that by reading my testimony, you can realize where I am coming from, the weaknesses that I have, my imperfections, and my humanness. Because it is throughout all of these, that the need for a Savior is made perfect.

Introduction

Christianity By Checklist
By: Dustin L. Taylor

I want to begin this introduction by thanking you for taking the interest in myself and the mission to which God has called me. This study was designed to merge my love of teaching and leading with my calling to reach out and spread a personal relationship with Christ to those who know him merely superficially. I have titled the study Christianity by Checklist, because that is sadly what Christianity has become to many people. They believe that as long as you meet a certain standard of behavior (going to church, giving to charity, and overall doing well in life) they can call themselves Christians and be OK. I intend to continually update the exercises found in this guide as I learn what works best, what can be improved on, and what students need to hear the most. (When I refer to students, I am referring to not only students that are enrolled in an education program. I recognize that college is not the best choice or even an available choice for every person, and that God has a purpose for each of us. Instead, I am referring to students of the bible, for that is what each of us truly is.) It is designed to be used solely as a guide for conducting a bible study, not a crutch. If you have any alterations, feel free to use them. If you find that they work, please email me and tell me about them so that I may incorporate them into future editions. The only thing that I ask when using this study guide is that you keep the main message the same by promoting a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Christianity by Checklist is a bible study targeted to students in the high school to college age range that have held misconceived notions about church and Christianity in general. Instead of promoting any certain religion or system of beliefs, Christianity By Checklist strives to have its students develop a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For too long, students have felt exposed to what I like to call “Thou Shall Nots” and hypocritical Christians who condemn with their words and partake in their actions. The result of this exposure is a generation who views Christianity as a “buzz killer” and a weak religion whose followers believe in Christ with as much certainty as they would purchase car insurance. It is a good idea to have it in case something happens, but if you drive safe and do the right things, you should be ok. This couldn’t possibly be any farther from the truth. When you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you discover a friend and brother that cannot be matched on Earth. Your actions are aimed to please him, much in the way that you would cook dinner or do a special favor for someone that you cared about deeply.
I have organized this study in the following manner. Each chapter deals with an important issue facing high school and college aged students and one to many studies and exercises designed to stimulate conversation around that issue and the scripture that addresses it. The ultimate goal of each study is exactly that, to stimulate conversation and have each student formulate their own opinion based on what the scripture speaks in their heart. I warn you, Christianity by Checklist is not politically correct. It does not tell us that it is OK to practice sexual immorality, be greedy, or any other practices which are commonly “swept under the rug,” simply because you go to church on Sunday. Nor is it designed to answer any of these difficult questions that students of today face. For most of these challenges, there is no simple answer. Instead, I have designed this study to provide a starting point. I have found a few pieces of scripture that addresses many of the challenges that students face day in and day out. It has been amazing to me to view the timeliness of the bible as I realize that God has given His children help for their every day struggles.