a question for you - what do you do with kids at Sunday School on Christmas day?

Here's a question for you from my friend Meredith. 

She asks,

I'm wondering if anyone out there has some good ideas of things to do with kids at church on Christmas morning - not for a kids' talk in church but an activity to do with them when they go to their "Sunday School" space. 

It's not the easiest time. Often the kids are tired after a late "I couldn't get to sleep" night and an excited early start. Some have opened their presents and want to get back home to them and others have to wait until after church and so want it all to go very quickly. 

I'd be interested to hear what others have done (or what they have noticed their kids were doing while they were in church) on this day. The last couple of years I have made simple Christmas decorations - one to take home and put on the tree and one to give to someone in the congregation. 

I'd love to hear what others do.

Please comment here.

a good children's bible for older kids

Ah, yes, children's bibles. Love 'em or hate 'em, most Christian parents read them to their kids. If you've ever tried to buy one, you'll know how many there are!

Most are collections of bible stories picked with an eye to "things kids like and can relate to". These range from good to indifferent. You'll probably want a few on your shelf for different ages. I reviewed lots in this post (recently updated).

Some kids' bibles are more interpretative. They give kids a biblical theology - an overview of God's big saving plan - and show how every bible story points to Jesus, which is brilliant. There are two excellent bibles for younger children that fit this category - The Big Picture Story Bible and The Jesus Storybook Bible (I reviewed them here).

A couple of years ago, another children's bible was published that shows how every story is fulfilled by Jesus: The Gospel Story Bible. I've been reading it with Andy (7) and Thomas (10). The writing is clear but dense and the ideas challenging, and it's not highly readable - it's sometimes a little over Andy's head - so it's more suited to older children than the two I just mentioned; but it's still a good choice.

My friend Deb says, "It’s much meatier than most children’s bibles. It is not straight text – it is still a re-telling of the story – but it sticks closely to the text and doesn’t add in too many imaginative details." We read to our whole family from a complete bible too, but it's helpful for my younger children to hear the fuller story in an accessible format.

At the end of each story is a paragraph explaining how it's fulfilled in Jesus; these are mostly excellent. My kids particularly enjoy the 3 discussion questions that go with each story - a great way of revising the story and driving the point home. The pages are bright and glossy (a bit hard on these old eyes, but the kids love them!) and the pictures unusual and eye-catching.

So if you're looking for a children's story bible for ages 7-12, one that will show kids how every story points to Jesus, you might have just found it.

If you want to find out more, check out ...

my review of children's Bibles
Deb's review of children's bibles
this detailed review of the most popular interpretative children's Bibles

Wanted: more church invaders

A few years ago, our family of six left a congregation full of parents with young children, and joined a church made up mostly of university students.1 This wasn’t an ideological statement on our part: it was simply because my husband works in university ministry, and that’s where we needed to be at the time. But it’s made me aware of some of the benefits and costs of going to church with people from a different age and stage from your own.

It’s easy to spend your entire life going to church with people just like you. Many of us start out in our parent’s church: a place, perhaps, with lots of other kids and teenagers. We graduate to a university church (that’s what my husband and I did), to a worker’s service, to a family service (ditto), to a congregation full of empty-nesters and, finally, retirees. It’s not so simple for those who are single, childless, or divorced; but that’s how it works a lot of the time. Even churches with mixed-age congregations find they tend to become homogeneous: for example, families with young children often attend church in the morning, while young adults go in the evening.2

Then there are the ‘church invaders’, people who make a deliberate decision to go to church with people who aren’t like them. I’ve met some of them: an energetic lady in her 60s who goes along to the youth service so she can show an interest in young people. A woman in her early 20s who attends a church where she’s the only person under 40, because she believes older and younger Christians need each other. A childless woman great at relating to kids, who gives her time to reaching out to children and their parents. A couple with older children who feel a little out of place in a congregation full of younger families, but who go to provide encouragement, support and wisdom.

So what is it like, crossing the frontiers? I won’t deny that I found it hard at first, going to a university church. I worried about my children growing up without lots of Christian kids their own age. I worried that no-one would want to talk to me - after all, what 20-year-old wants to hang out with a 40-something woman surrounded by noisy children? My instinct was to retreat to the back of the church, serve supper, feed my kids, and talk to the few women my age: to leave the boundaries between age groups uncrossed and unchallenged.

I’d love to claim some great godliness that helped me overcome this self-absorption, but I can’t. What happened was that, one memorable morning, I prayed about my attitude to church, and God’s Spirit convicted me that I was acting like a spoiled child: self-centred, self-conscious, self-pitying. Too wrapped up in myself to love those around me. Too concerned about what people thought of me to be concerned about them. Too obsessed with my own needs to consider the needs of others. I wept, repented, and asked for God’s help to start again.

In God’s very good timing – how often he brings us to the end of ourselves before he brings about a change in our circumstances! – the women in our church got together the following week. Older, younger, student, graduate, mother, teenager: we laughed and ate and swapped our stories. We met again, and talked about how we could better encourage each other. We met again, read Titus 2:3-5, and saw how God wants older and younger women to be involved in each other’s lives. Soon, I’ll start meeting regularly with two younger women to read the Bible and pray. It’s no coincidence that, at the very point I stopped worrying about whether I belonged, I felt a sense of belonging.

I’m beginning to see how important it is that I’m here, right now, in this church, being encouraged by and encouraging these particular women. In a few years time, when they get married and have kids, or wonder if they’ll stay single, or start out in work and ministry, I hope I’ll be beside them, helping them find the way into mature Christian womanhood. I look back to when I was a student going to a university church, and I’m deeply grateful to the older single people, couples and families who came along, modelled the Christian life for us, and taught and trained us in godliness. There’s a richness of encouragement that happens between Christians of different ages and stages that’s beautiful to see.

What about our kids? Is it fair to them, going to a church with only a few other children and teenagers?3 Our two younger boys are loved and cared for by a bunch of enthusiastic young people who enjoy having them around, and who are learning to lead as they teach them in Sunday School. Our older son enjoys hanging out with the godly young men who surround him. Our teenage daughter is excited about being mentored by a lovely young Christian woman. Our marriage and family are a lived-out, messy, week-by-week example for many who never experienced a Christian family growing up. In the end, it’s not the patterns of church that matter to us and our children: what matters is that the gospel is taught, and they are loved and prayed for by the members of our church family.

Not everyone is built to be a church invader. We know many Christians – single workers, couples with young children, retirees – who do their best ministry loving and serving people in a similar situation to their own. We’ve advised others, who find it hard to get to church at all, to go to a church that’s designed for their needs. But even if you don’t invade a church, do invade people’s lives. Be aware of the unseen boundaries that cross churches: old and young, married and single, privileged and disadvantaged, we’re all part of the body of Christ (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11). Think about who might feel in the minority, even if they hide it well. Invest time in younger Christians, and seek out the wisdom of older Christians. Invite people who are different from you into your life.

But perhaps you are built to be a church invader. Maybe you’re an older person who’s good at relating to young people, a member of a family who would like to reach out to single workers, or a young person who’s never seen a Christian marriage in action. If that’s the case, why not choose a church where you don’t naturally belong? Why not choose a church, not because it meets your needs, but because it needs you? Why not make a home for others in a place that feels far from home? Why not become a church invader? We’d love to have you along!


1. Actually, there were a couple of moves along the way, but I’m simplifying the story for the sake of clarity. ↩
2. I don’t want to comment on which approach to church is best: homogeneous or heterogeneous. I think there are benefits to both approaches. ↩
3. I’m often questioned about this. I was recently helped by an alternate point of view, offered by Kathy Keller in Why the city is a wonderful place to raise children. ↩


This post was first published at The Briefing today.

image is by The Arches from flickr

Kids@church/Click: Some great material for your childrens Sunday School

I teach Sunday School for children regularly, but I don't always have the time and energy to write my own lessons. So last year I found myself in the market for Sunday School material.

Thanks to a friend trawling through the shelves at a Christian bookshop, what I discovered was kids@church, put out by Youthworks in conjunction with CEP. (In Britain, it's published as Click by The Good Book Company). I suspect that lots of churches in Sydney are familiar with this material, but many other churches aren't.

kids@church is a complete nine-year Sunday School syllabus for preschool and primary school children. It consists of Serious Play (which is for children aged 3 to 5), Adventure (which is for children aged 5 to 7) and Over the Top (which is for for children aged 8 to 11. This is the one I tested). For each age group, there's 12 sets of 10 lessons—one set for each school term—which cover the big story of Scripture in three years. Each term's lessons can be purchased separately, with no pesky subscriptions. In a single term, you'll need one reasonably priced teacher's manual (which includes 10 lesson plans, visual aids and a child's component) and enough child's components (take-home booklets) for your group.

During term 4 last year, I taught Ephesians and Revelation to our Sunday School using Preparing for Jesus' Coming, an Over the Top booklet for children aged 8 to 11. Here's what I liked about kids@church:

• It's thoroughly biblical. The exegesis is excellent. (There was only one lesson out of 10 that I had quibbles with.) It's been written and edited by a panel that includes respected names like Kirsten Birkett.
• It teaches the Bible in a clear and interesting way. I occasionally added to a Bible teaching time that I thought could be a little more interesting (for example, I ‘drew’ the story of Saul on the road to Damascus), but mostly this was unnecessary.
• It covers the full story of the Bible. If you were to run this material from year to year, the children would get a good overview of the Bible story and how it all hangs together, and then you would review this as they moved from age group to age group.
• It deals with parts of the Bible that Sunday School material often avoids. I chose the lessons on Ephesians and Revelation for this very reason! Most Sunday School material focuses on Bible narrative, but avoids the theologically dense parts of Scripture. I want to teach children how to handle all of the Bible. I want to teach them sound doctrine, not just Bible stories.
• It tackles challenging theological issues, while staying sensitive to children's level of understanding. For example, the lesson on Ephesians 1:3-14 talks clearly about what it means to be ‘chosen’ (predestined) by God to be part of his family.
• It teaches memory verses well. I was very impressed with the variety of methods used to teach memory verses, and I'll be using these methods in future!
• It's engaging. Games, treasure hunts, posters, dramas, crafts, murals, maps—I was very impressed by the range of activities at the start of each lesson, which are designed to grab the children's attention and introduce the lessons' themes. It was good to have several activities to choose from. In each lesson, there's also an excellent list of suggested songs from well-known kids' CDs related to the lesson's theme.
• It's age-appropriate. I found the material for eight to 11-year-olds to be well pitched to this age group. This is typical; I'm currently using some other CEP material for a range of ages (Kids Plus) and it's carefully and cleverly adapted to different stages of understanding.
• It's well-organized and easy to use. It took me a week or so to get used to the layout (as with all new material!), but I soon found it clear, easy to follow, and suitable for teaching from and referring to during the class. The list of ‘gear’ to take each week was helpful, and the ‘photocopiables’ were well-designed and easy to reproduce.

There wasn't much about kids@church that I didn't like. But here are a few small complaints:

• The visual aids (mainly posters) are small and not particularly impressive. (I found the picture of the risen Christ off-putting!) We often chose to create our own posters together instead.
• The take-home booklets: the children found these small black and white booklets a little boring. However, it was good to have something for them to work on at the end of each lesson that they could take home at the end of term.
• A lack of craft ideas: only one lesson included traditional Sunday School crafts. Even if we didn't use them each week, it would have been good to have some more ideas for crafts at the end of each lesson.
• The Bible translation used is the CEV (Contemporary English Version). While this is a matter of preference, I find the International Children's Bible/New Century Version to be more reliable, if a little less readable.

I'll be using kids@church again! While I wouldn't want to use one Sunday School syllabus all the time (I think the children and teachers would get a little bored!), kids@church would be at the top of my list if I was looking for a single syllabus. With it, I'd be confident that our children were learning the complete story of the Bible in a doctrinally sound and interesting way. Because each set of 10 lessons stands on its own, you can also teach kids@church for a single term, as I did.

If you're looking for Sunday School material that is biblical, theologically sound, clear, usable, engaging and fun for kids, kids@church is well worth a look!

This article was first published yesterday at Sola Panel.

good for how long?

Sunday School went well. Although I discovered an interesting fact about children's beliefs, even (especially?) well-taught children.

When I asked them "Can we make ourselves good?" there was an almost unanimous "Yes!" (One boy also had an endearingly stubborn conviction that bad trees could make themselves good.)

And when I challenged them - "Have you managed to be good for a whole day? How about a week? No whinging, no disobeying, no tiny lies?" I had to push it out to "a year" before one of the boys would admit he wasn't good the whole time.

In other words, children are no different to the rest of us: blind to our sin, and convinced of our ability to do good. And just as in need of having God open our eyes, so we can see how helpless we are without God's grace.

Sunday School: to craft or not to craft?

Over at Children Desiring God, where they have the temerity not to include craft in their excellent Sunday School material, you can almost hear the anguish in this Frequently Asked Question: "Why aren't there any crafts included in the curricula?" You can read their response here.

I agree that craft can be expensive, that it uses important preparation time, and that it often teaches little. And I don't think it's necessary - I'm pretty sure it wasn't a big feature of my Sunday School growing up, where I learnt heaps in a fun way.

But I am including craft in the Sunday School material I'm writing on the Fruit of the Spirit.

Craft, if carefully chosen, is not only enjoyable, but an excellent aid to communication and memory. But it has to be craft that counts!! Craft that teaches. Craft that is meaningful. Craft that provides a lasting reminder of what's been learned.

Many years ago, Lizzy made a banner which still hangs next to her bed, and every night we pray together through its four words - thankyou, please, sorry, and love. Every night it teaches her how to pray.

Here are some of the craft ideas I've come up with for the fruit of the Spirit:

- a laminated bookmark with Galatians 5:22-23 on it for their Bibles;
- a smiley face badge to remind them to be "joyful" in all circumstances.
- a money-box to set aside pocket money for poor children, to model "kindness";
- a friendship bracelet or wrist band, to remind them to be "faithful" to God when they're at school.

If anyone has any ideas for craft (or activities) illustrating "patience" (which I now think is about enduring insult and suffering, not about waiting, so the Harold the Snail statue I was planning probably won't do) or "gentleness" (the only thing I've come up with is a fuzzy-wuzzy to stroke when feeling cross, to calm down and help stop the angry retort), please let me know.

resources for teaching children (3): Sunday School

I've written recently about my conviction that we often underestimate children when it comes to teaching theology.

Especially in Sunday School, where we tell comforting stories about how Jesus welcomed the little children, but avoid concepts like judgement and atonement because they seem too confronting or difficult (and a bit scary if the parents find out what we've been telling their kids!).

But I've never forgotten the day my Sunday School teacher took out a little book with coloured pages and explained the way of salvation, complete with creation, sin, atonement, justification and heaven, in terms we could understand.

So I was excited to find the Children Desiring God website, which bases its Sunday School curriculum on the conviction that "children can handle deep truth at a young age. We want to fill them with solid Bible truth that will give them a foundation to fall back on when they go through deep waters." Wow!

I had a quick look at the sample lessons and was impressed to find that the study on the flood aims to teach preschoolers, amongst other things, that God knows everything, that people are sinners and can't save themselves, that God is holy and can't tolerate sin, and that God is merciful.

And the material isn't boring, even though (horrors!) it excludes craft as expensive and time-consuming. It uses vivid acted illustrations - substitution is taught to school children using a mess on the floor and a wooden spoon - to provide "an important bridge from what children see and understand (concrete thinking) to what they can't see and find hard to understand (abstract thinking)."

There is some other excellent Sunday School material out there, which takes no short-cuts in teaching children theology.

The best I've seen is The king, the snake and the promise, which gives the big picture of God's saving plan in the Bible. The 10 lessons come with a CD of children's music, and they trace the theme of "God's people in God's place under God's rule" from creation through Abraham and Jesus to heaven. You end up with a colourful banner as a permanent visual reminder of the big Bible story.

Stephanie Carmichael's Teaching little ones is reliable and fun, and covers lots of big Bible themes - like God's character, promises and kingship - for ages 3-5 and 5-8. It's inexpensive and easy to use. We use her material most weeks in our Sunday School.

Convinced of the need for Sunday School material teaching theological concepts, I've also written some of my own.

In 2005 I wrote and led a 9-week Sunday School series on Romans 1-8 for primary school aged children. We discussed Christianity with an incredulous puppet, added a new line to our "Good News Rap" each week, and used lots of visual illustrations, to communicate difficult concepts like sin, hell, justification, faith, and atonement. It was fun! Every child took home a laminated book of coloured pages which they had illustrated themselves week-by-week, showing the stages of sin and redemption.

At the moment I'm working on a 10-week series on the Fruit of the Spirit for our little Sunday school (10 kids, ages 5-10, Aussie and ESL). I've decided to explain each virtue - love, joy, peace, patience - using the story of one of God's people, since that's what the Bible often does to illustrate a concept like faith (Romans 4, Hebrews 11). We'll talk about what each virtue means in the Bible, and apply it to the everyday experience of children.

I'll tell you how it goes.

Expect more on the topic of Sunday School over the next couple of days. Tomorrow I'm planning a post on the usefulness - or otherwise - of craft in Sunday School, and on Sunday I'd like to tell you why I've been collecting bad fruit all week.

You can e-mail me if you'd like to see my material on Romans or the Fruit of the Spirit (you'll have to wait for the last one!).

not much reading happening ...

And if you're wondering why I'm including a lot of dedications (see yesterday's post) in this blog at the moment, it's because that's about as far as I'm getting in all those wonderful books in my book list on the right.

All my reading time at the moment is taken up with concordance, commentary and text work on the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. Every morning I pick another fruit, and look through the references to it in the Bible. Gentleness today, self-control tomorrow ...

I'm preparing a 10-week Sunday School program on the fruit of the Spirit for the 5-10 year olds at our church. It's led to lots of lights-go-on moments about the meaning of words like "peace" and "faithfulness" in the Bible, and plenty of reflections about how to teach the Bible in Sunday School.

More about that another time!!