I was asked to contribute a chapter to this book project back in 2014. It’s chapter 21 in Pulse: Pumping Life into Your Kids Ministry. I chose to write on something that I am pretty passionate about:
Engaging children in the chronological, linear, and unfolding biblical narrative rather than using Scripture to instruct mere principles or topics.
“The biblical tale, through the most rigorous economy of means, leads us again and again to ponder complexities of motive and ambiguities of character because these are essential aspects of its vision of man, created by God, enjoying or suffering all the consequences of human freedom. Almost the whole range of biblical narrative, however, embodies the basic perception that man must live before God, in the transforming medium of time, incessantly and perplexingly in relation with others; and a literary perspective on the operations of the narrative may help us more than any other to see how this perception was translated into stories that have had such a powerful, enduring hold on the imagination” (Alter, 1981, p. 22).
For me it all started with a side comment by my professor, Mark Jalovick (2000), in his Old Testament History Two class: “Children need to learn the stories of the Bible.” To most this remark would have sounded obvious, and it is. Humanity’s young progeny need to learn the basic content contained in Scripture and, thankfully, this content is primarily narrative in nature. Stories seem to be a near universal medium to transfer both history and information. There’s a reason why my own children beg my wife and I to tell them stories of when we were kids. They are fascinated by their parents’ histories and they want to come to know us more deeply by our transferring that knowledge through the narrative literary device.
It’s no wonder that God chose narrative, storytelling, to be the primary literary device to communicate both the knowledge of Himself as well as the account of His interaction with His people. It’s been said that “the Bible is about God, continually working to fix this world through His kind of people in order to make His kind of world.” If the Bible is primarily narrative and this is the literary device of choice to transmit, according to Alter (1981), “its vision of man, created by God, enjoying or suffering all the consequences of human freedom” (p. 22), then the stories are interconnected and dependent upon one another, and are not intended merely to be principalized nor disconnected from the environment in which they are found.
As a children’s ministry professional I encounter curriculum that has been organized into human constructed topics and themes with disparate Bible stories included that have been disconnected from the narrative environment in which they are found. These topics seem to be of high value to its adherents. Topics like: generosity, friendship, faith, leadership, service, attitude, and prayer. Topics might even be organized in theological categories like: Who is Jesus? Who is God? Who is the Holy Spirit? What is the Bible? The standard approach seems to be: find a relevant topic, theme, or characteristic that needs to be taught and engaged in with children and find Bible stories that seem to speak to those particularities. In other words, the curriculum writer or practitioner finds a problem or issue that needs to be addressed in life and looks to the Bible for the answers to that particular problem or issue.
While not an altogether bad approach to learning and engaging with the Bible (after all, at least an attempt at engaging with a Bible story has been initiated), there does seem to be one big problem with this tactic: It assumes that the Bible stories, taken out of their contextual environment, have something to say to any and every question, problem, or issue human beings have. And if I may take it a step further: It assumes that humans have even a remote idea what the main problems of life really are rather than the author of the Word. And, if you don’t get too frustrated with this line of thought or hang me out to dry completely, can I take this approach to its logical conclusion? Who are we as humans to tell God what we need to know, and the Word He gave us is somehow inappropriately organized and too incongruent that we need to separate them into our own, omnipotently-devised categories?
If my previous statement causes too much consternation, I apologize. I really do. If my attempt at pointing to a different approach causes you to shut down and not engage with a different idea then I repent. To put it simply, I merely find the:
discover-a-relevant-topic-theme-or-characteristic-category-then-go-get-a-few-Bible-stories-to-illustrate-the-category-in-action-approach
to be limiting and backwards. It is limiting because the biblical narrative is limited to the category it has been chosen to emphasize and illustrate and it is backwards because I believe that we should approach Scripture on its own divinely authored terms, rather than our human devised terms.
I have been a full time children’s pastor at Hayward Wesleyan Church in Hayward, WI for over 10 years. When I arrived at the church, their Sunday school was in desperate need of some continuity. I had thought a lot about Mark Jalovick’s statement, “Children need to learn the stories of the Bible,” over my years of undergraduate education and I had somewhat of an untested idea that I wanted to implement at the first church’s children’s ministry I would pastor. My first summer I scoured the Bible and listed all the key, what I called “move the story along,” stories in the chronological, biblical narrative. I then organized them into what we would locally call our Main Street 3 year through the Bible curriculum.
- We spent the first year in the first five books (Torah) of the Old Testament telling the unfolding story of God creating the world and humanity who was made in God’s image, humanity’s fall, and God crafting a special group of people through Abraham to establish His presence in the world.
- The second year we continued to engage with the story of God’s people in the land of Israel from the time of Joshua, to the turbulent times of the Judges and Ruth, into the establishment of the monarchy with King Saul, David, and Solomon before the kingdom split in two and experienced a wild ride both in the North (Israel) and in the South (Judah) with their kings (in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles) which eventually led to exile and a subsequent return under Ezra and Nehemiah.
- The third year we looked into the life of Jesus in the Gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and the outworking of the church in Acts.
Each Sunday, we would quickly review the story up to the “current” point, then creatively engage with the story of the week, then offer some application ideas based on what was going on in the world and in our community at that time. The idea was to let the story be the story. Our children’s ministry is organized in a large-group/small-group format, and in small groups I would often hear of the leaders engaging with the students on extremely relevant topics, themes, and character issues based on the current grade and situation the students found themselves in through life.
Again, the idea was to let God show us what He wants to show us in the particular way He crafted the narrative account. To be honest, both the students and the leaders had a lot of fun with this approach because it felt more like reading and acting out The Lord of the Rings trilogy from week to week than simple Sunday school lessons meant to communicate a principle or truth with a Bible story attached. I remember hearing from my first grade teacher, who had taught Sunday school prior to my employment for many years, say this:
“I had no idea that Moses came after Abraham. I’ve never read the Bible from the beginning and in order. This is fascinating to learn what God’s whole deal with Abraham was and how what Moses did was an extension of the Abrahamic covenant.”
SS Teacher
Yeah, she said “extension of the Abrahamic covenant”! What I was more intrigued with, and quietly appalled by, was this teacher’s lack of knowledge of the entirety of the biblical story and each participant’s role in the unfolding narrative. This teacher got quite an informed biblical education those first three years and she was not in Bible College!
I am pretty passionate about starting with Scripture and letting it speak for itself, but there are shortcomings that I’ve noticed and don’t mind being honest about them. As any children’s ministry practitioner could attest to, there is only so much an educator can do in an hour. If one is too ambitious, the student is on information and cognitive overload. If one is not prepared, then the students put on their own program, and it’s most definitely not the kind of children’s program that’s cute! Communicating and engaging with the biblical narrative takes time and energy, and it often consumes much of the time. What I’ve noticed is that the large group time lasts about 75% of the children’s ministry time and about 25% is left for small group. What seems to get sacrificed or shortchanged is the discussion and application element for more activities and kinetic games after students have been sitting for so long. The story keeps students’ attention really well, however their energy needs to be expended during the last 15 minutes or so and that tends to happen during small group.
Chronological biblical storytelling seems to be in vogue right now. I can think of several curriculum companies that have a chronological narrative program in their collection. Most of these tend to blend the two distinct approaches I’ve described: 1) starting with the Bible and arriving at an application, or 2) starting with a topic then going to the Bible. In my opinion, a few do a great job, while others don’t. I’m not trying to knock curriculum companies or their particular products. What I do want to make sure anyone reading this understands is:
ALL YOU NEED IS YOUR BIBLE AND A DESIRE TO CONNECT AND SIMPLIFY THE NARRATIVE WITHIN TO AN AUDIENCE OF KIDS.
You don’t need a Bible College degree. You don’t need any writing experience. You don’t need lots of money. The last time I checked, almost every human being I know has the capacity to tell a story. And the more stories you tell the better you get at it. My suggestion is to start at the beginning of the Bible and break the stories down into manageable segments and tell them week after week. If you are a strategic planner type, sit down with a Bible and a couple of close friends and thumb through Scripture and plan out a scope and sequence through the narrative (or you can use the one we created). Then week after week in your children’s ministry, tell, in an engaging way, the Bible story in its chronological narrative environment. Do you need a curriculum? Not really. The really neat thing about the Internet is that if you need a craft, activity sheet, or a game related to a particular story, you will be able to find it. I know because that’s what we do at our church. I’ve bought all the craft, activity sheet, and games books out there and catalogued them with our curriculum scope and sequence and then searched and catalogued those we find on the World Wide Web.
All to say, anyone can take a Bible they have in their home and begin to retell its stories in the way God has them laid out in Scripture. It is simply amazing what you will discover when you encounter the biblical narrative. And you know what? When you’ve gone all the way through the Bible and you’re done… start back at the beginning again and you’ll be blown away by the things you missed the first time because you didn’t know how things would work themselves out. Then when you complete it the second time, start back at the beginning again because 5-8 years will have gone by and you’ve got an entire new group of students who’ve never encountered the biblical narrative before, and you get the privilege of introducing them to God’s story as it unfolds in human history.
There’s nothing quite like it!
Photo credit: Amazon product image and snapshot of the first page of chapter 21