Recently my 13-year-old told me after seeing the Celebration Station video of the woman washing Jesus' feet that he'd never heard that story before. What!? Never heard that story!? This is a child that's been in children's ministry and in my home for 13 years! What's the deal?
This issue always make me think of something my husband asked me when our oldest was around 6. Grant had brought home a take-home sheet from Sunday school and Mike asked me, "Is there any story besides Noah's ark?"
These are two stories that illustrate a pervasive problem in children's ministry. I wonder if kids are getting the overall scope of the Bible if we're always changing curriculum and starting over from the beginning--year after year after year. So there's lots of Noah but not lots of the Bible in its entirety.
I'm actually at a point where I'd like to encourage children's ministers to spend in-depth time choosing a curriculum--and then stick with it through it's entire scope and sequence (whether that's 2 or 3 years or more). Trust your instincts and God's direction and stick with the plan. Now, of course, I think for all sorts of reasons that Group has all the underlying stuff that makes for great Bible learning, but seriously, even if you don't pick Group's curriculum....stick with what you do choose.
It's the only way for kids to get to walk through the Bible and get the whole of God's story. And there are so many riches beyond Genesis. Let's saturate kids with all of God's Word!
We are going through Crazy Love at church with our high school kids. It is really cool the way the groups are interacting and asking questions. Our only concern is that the kids are not truly grounded in God's word. They know the stories but are not sure of the basics. That is just a bad.
Posted by: Tina Marin | September 20, 2009 at 07:38 PM
We have a generation of adults who don't know the stories raising kids who won't hear them unless we tell them. Continuity is sooo important. We spend a lot of time choosing curriculum...we should not have to re-choose every year. For the sake of our kids and The Word, we should not
Posted by: Tim Miller | September 20, 2009 at 07:53 PM
We are using curriculum called Kingdom Quest for our grades 1-6 Sunday School. My job is basically to make it work for us to maximize the learning potential of our young ones. I've done a little reworking and we've now got a plan in place to go through the entire Bible, story by story, in 3 years. I am really looking forward to this plan because, as you alluded to, I believe it is incredibly important for kids to be Biblically literate. We started this three year plan just last Sunday with Genesis. Here we go!
Posted by: Clayton Gladish | September 25, 2009 at 09:35 AM