Using Why Believe? in Sunday School

Why Believe? is a free apologetics curriculum you can teach on Sunday morning without buying anything, creating an account, or printing a packet. Every lesson is a web page that opens on a phone, a tablet, or a projector. The Explorer track is exactly thirteen lessons, which is exactly one quarter.

Most Sunday school material answers what we believe. Very little of it answers why anyone should think it is true. That gap is what this site exists to fill, and it is the question your fifth graders are already hearing at school.

What a teacher needs to know

  • Completely free. No account, no login, no ads, nothing to buy, no email required.
  • Nothing to print. Open the lesson on any screen and teach from it.
  • Non-denominational, and not affiliated with any church or publisher.
  • Every lesson ends with a quiz that gives the answer and an explanation immediately.
  • Available in English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, French and Portuguese, with the same lessons in the same order.

How long a lesson actually takes

An Explorer lesson (grades 3-5) has three or four illustrations and one quiz, and takes about eight minutes to read aloud with a class. That leaves most of a forty-minute hour for discussion.

A Foundations lesson (grades 6-8) is roughly twice as long and carries key terms, a discussion box and two quizzes. For a Sunday morning, either split one lesson across two weeks, or ask the class to read it during the week and use your time together for the discussion.

A thirteen-week quarter for grades 3-5

Teach the Explorer track straight through in order. It is built in three units and needs nothing added to it.

UNIT 1 · BIG QUESTIONS
  1. Who Made All This?
  2. Is the Universe an Accident?
  3. How Do You Know Right From Wrong?
  4. Can You Believe in Science AND God?
UNIT 2 · THE BIBLE & JESUS
  1. Is the Bible Just an Old Book?
  2. Did Anyone Know About Jesus Before He Was Born?
  3. Was Jesus a Real Person?
  4. Jesus Said He Was God. Was He Telling the Truth?
  5. What Happened on Easter?
UNIT 3 · HARD QUESTIONS
  1. Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?
  2. Why Are There So Many Different Religions?
  3. How Do We Know What's True?
  4. What to Do When Someone Says God Isn't Real

Week nine is the resurrection lesson, so a quarter beginning in January lands it close to Easter.

A thirteen-week quarter for grades 6-8

The Foundations track has nineteen lessons, which is more than a quarter. These thirteen stand on their own and carry the argument from beginning to end. The remaining six make a good follow-on quarter.

  1. Does God Exist? The Universe Needs a Cause
  2. Right & Wrong: Where Does Morality Come From?
  3. The Universe Was Built for Life - On Purpose?
  4. Science & Faith: Are They Really at War?
  5. Can We Trust the Bible? The Manuscript Evidence
  6. Did Archaeologists Prove the Bible Right?
  7. Why Christianity? What Makes It Different?
  8. Prophecy: Did the Old Testament Predict Jesus?
  9. Non-Christian Sources Confirm Jesus Existed
  10. Who Did Jesus Claim to Be?
  11. The Empty Tomb: What Really Happened?
  12. If God is Good, Why is There Evil?
  13. What to Say When Someone Challenges Your Faith

How to run a forty-minute class

  1. Open with the question, not the answer (2 minutes). Every lesson title is a question. Ask it, and let them guess before you show them anything.
  2. Work through the lesson together (10 to 15 minutes). Read it aloud, or put it on a screen and take turns. The illustrations are there to hold attention, so do not skip past them.
  3. Take the quiz as a class (5 minutes). Let them vote before you tap. The explanation appears immediately, right or wrong.
  4. Discuss (12 to 15 minutes). This is the part that matters most.
  5. Close by naming one piece of evidence (3 minutes). Ask each child for one thing they could tell a friend this week.

Lessons within a unit build on each other, but any single lesson also works alone, which matters on the Sunday when half the class is new.

Three closing questions that work with any lesson

Foundations and Advanced lessons each contain their own discussion box. Explorer lessons do not, because they are written to be read together with an adult. These three questions work for any lesson in any track:

  • What is one thing you learned today that you could tell a friend?
  • What part of this is hardest to believe, and why?
  • If someone told you "that is not true," what is the one piece of evidence you would give them?

If you only have one Sunday

For a single class, a substitute week, or a youth night, these three need no preparation and no earlier lessons:

📌 WHAT THIS IS NOT

This is not a Bible curriculum. It does not teach the biblical narrative, memory verses, crafts, or a scope and sequence through Scripture, and it is not meant to replace the material that does. It answers one question your other curriculum probably does not: why should anyone think this is actually true? Use it alongside your Bible teaching, not instead of it.

Teaching at home instead?

There is a companion page for families: Using Why Believe? in Your Homeschool. It includes a way to teach several ages the same topic in the same week.

Browse the tracks directly: Explorer · Foundations · Advanced