I hope the children’s teaching material you use helps you teach the Bible well and faithfully. But no matter how good the material is, still expect to make changes. I’m the UK editor for the CLICK teaching syllabus, but even so, every time I’ve used it, I’ve changed it!
There’s so much that writers of published material, myself included, simply don’t know. They haven’t met the children in your group, or the team who teach them. They don’t know how long your session lasts (sometimes, you don’t get much warning of that either!) or the space you meet in. They can’t see that your group is full of active boys, or that you have to keep the noise down because the crèche is next door. They don’t know if your group is mostly younger ones this year, or an after-school group where the children have little Bible knowledge. They don’t even know whether you have two children or twenty.
All these things make a difference to the session you put together, and how it then goes. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all teaching session. You know your group best. So expect to make changes.
Unless you have a particularly long session time, there’ll probably be more ideas in the material than you can use. So how do you choose between them? The above list may help you to reject some: you can’t do baking without a kitchen; relay races can’t be run in someone’s lounge or with just two children; a Bible history quiz won’t work with children who know no Bible stories.
But how do you select from what’s left, to give a session that focuses on the big idea in the Bible passage? That’s what we’ll come on to next…
Alison Mitchell is a Senior Editor at The Good Book Company, where she has worked on a range of products including Bible-reading notes for children and families, and the Christianity Explored range of resources. She is the best-selling author of The Christmas Promise and the award-winning Jesus and the Lions' Den.
