Kids Sunday School Lessons, VBS 2008, church nursery - Children’s Ministry

Bible reading is one of the most important activities you can do with children. I believe that every Sunday school session, family devotion and children’s church meeting should include a time of Bible reading.

Since the Bible is God’s Word, we should do our best to listen to it.

The Big Problem: Can Kids Understand?

Children become discouraged when they don’t understand. Most kids experience a knowledge gap when the Bible is read aloud. Sometimes it’s the vocabulary, sometimes it’s the concepts, and sometimes it’s just the way the text is read.

Let’s be honest - Most children have a hard time comprehending the Bible when it is read aloud. Every week in church, many children are only learning to check out mentally while God’s Word is read.

Don’t give up. I believe that all of this can be overcome, and children can learn to appreciate the public reading of the scriptures. The benefits are much bigger than the challenges.

Another Problem: Will Kids Be Bored?

It’s contrary to their nature to listen while the Bible is read. One dogma of modern children’s ministry is to “keep the kids moving.” While this is true in general, there must be times when the children learn to be still and listen.

Reality check - nearly everything about reading the Bible aloud is counter cultural. Children have been groomed by our society to demand entertainment. All those hours watching television, or playing video games have trained their minds. This makes the simple reading of the Bible a strange and potentially boring activity.

Some children will be bored, but this should not be the only factor that directs your ministry. The benefits of hearing God’s Word are much greater than the potential drawbacks. These problem can be overcome, especially when care is taken to lessen its effects.

Some Practical Tips For Reading The Bible To Children

1. Teach about the importance of listening to God’s Word.
Have you ever told the children how blessed we are to have the Bible? God was very good to give us his directions, we must learn to value them.

2. Use a consistent translation that is appropriate for children.
We use the ESV, which is on the harder end of readability for children. I will sometimes go to the NiRV on more difficult passages.

3. Choose short passages that emphasize action.
The Gospel of Mark is full of action and short units. These make it an ideal place to start reading aloud to children.

4. Use expositional reading.
Be willing to pause and explain the hard parts. I prepare a marked copy of the passage by underlining difficult words and making notes in the side margins.

5. Practice the passage you will read.
“Always be prepared” is a great motto for children’s ministry too. Read the passage aloud several times. It will make a big difference.

6. Model excitement and interest in the Bible.
Children will learn as much from your attitude as from what you say. If you believe that God is speaking in the Bible, then act like it.

7. Read dramatically and with good storytelling techniques.
This comes from being prepared. Make eye contact as much as possible with the children. Pause to build suspense. Use your own body language to add character to the reading.

Do you read the Bible aloud for children?

Have you had trouble getting kids to listen to the Bible? How did you solve that problme? What practical tips can you share? The comment section is open - I’d love to have your feedback.

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Let’s be honest - there are very few churches that do a good job with Vacation Bible School follow-up. If you’re like me, your church struggles to be effective in reaching VBS prospects.

In this article, I want to talk about some common challenges and strategies for VBS follow-up. Then I’ll share some ideas to help your church be more effective in this ministry.

Some Challenges To VBS Follow-Up

• Post VBS exhaustion: People are tired after VBS. The all-out effort of putting together an excellent Bible school can leave everyone too exhausted for follow-up programs.
• Reaching the reached: Many children who attend are from other churches. It can be discouraging to spend energy reaching families that already faithfully attend another church.
• Failure to Plan: The most overlooked detail of VBS planning is follow-up. It’s easy to put it off until after Bible school, but it’s a detail that often gets forgotten.
• No evaluation of follow-up: Most churches keep detailed statistics about VBS attendance, but few monitor the effectiveness of their post vacation Bible school outreach. Too often, you get what you measure.

Four VBS Follow-Up Strategies

1. Sunday school enrollment: One traditional tactic is to assign unchurched prospects to an appropriate Sunday school class for follow-up. This works well if you have a strong Sunday school system.
2. Pastoral follow-up: This is the default plan in many small churches and can be an effective on a limited scale. But many pastors can’t add more than a handful of visits to their busy schedules each week. As the memory of VBS fades, so does the likelihood of reaching those families.
3. Refer prospects to the follow-up department: Some larger churches have established outreach teams. These departments are often led by paid staff who specialize in outreach.
4. Assign prospective families to outreach minded church members: I’ve heard this idea passed around, but never seen it in action. The idea is to find church members who are known for hospitality and willing to invest in an unchurched family. They would then invite the prospects to dinner at their home and begin to build relationships and invite them to church.

Practical Advice For Your Church

• Know your church culture: Different ministry settings will require different strategies. It’s important to know what strengths your church has in the area of outreach. Choose one strategy from the list above and focus on making it work.
• Be realistic: For many smaller churches, adding one or two families a year would be a major accomplishment. Pray that God would direct your efforts and lead at least one family to Christ.
• Trust God: Ultimately it’s God’s job to bring people to Jesus. Pray and work hard, but trust God to bless your Vacation Bible School follow-up.

Share Your Best Ideas

If your church has had some success with VBS follow-up, leave a comment below and share your advice.

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** This review was written by Terry Delaney. He blogs at Diary of a Seminary Student, Said at Southern, and Going To Seminary.

Blair, Lindsey and Bobby Gilles.  Pastor Daddy.  Louisville:  Sojourn Community Church, 2008.  16 pp.  $11.95. (available directly from the publisher)

In 16 short pages, this book introduces the view that the home is a little church.  This was espoused by great divines such as Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards and more recently by men like Donald S. Whitney and R. Albert Mohler.

As I read this book to my two children, they enjoyed the pictures and the stories.  This book is a great introduction to the practice of family worship and how the church and the home are interrelated.  The authors alternate between church and home and show how each element of worship (outside of baptism and the Lord’s Supper) can be done at home through family worship.

This has become an important direction that many in the church are beginning to move toward.  There has become an emphasis on family worship and its importance to the health of the church in recent years.  If you are involved in children’s ministry, this is an excellent resource to own.  It is also a way in which you can introduce family worship to the parents through the children.

• You can see more information about Pastor Daddy on the Sojourn website.
• You can also read Gretchen’s review of Pastor Daddy

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** This review was written by Terry Delaney. He blogs at Diary of a Seminary Student, Said at Southern, and Going To Seminary.

Brown, Alison. A Bible Alphabet. Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2007. 31 pp. $8.00 (Buy from Westminster Books and save 40%)

I knew coming from Banner of Truth, this book would be a solid resource for young children learning their alphabet.  I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much of a resource this book can become.  Beginning with “a is for ark” and ending with “z is for Zion,” Ms. Brown takes a quick tour of the entire Bible in twenty-six letters.

The sub-title of the book is “introducing little children to well-known Bible stories.”  This is accomplished and then some.  For example, I would have thought that “w is wall” would have been about Jericho but it was not.  Rather, she chose the story of Nehemiah’s rebuilding Jerusalem.  Throughout the alphabet, you are introduced to Jezebel, Dorcas, jail, the epistles of Paul and Balaam.  These are stories that most children are not as familiar with; that is, in the children’s bible story books I have read to my boys, these have never been mentioned to our detriment.

My oldest son, who is four, knows his alphabet but enjoyed the illustrations and even told me more about the stories than what was shared in the book.  As I was reading the book with my boys, I was wishing they had scripture references for the stories so we could turn immediately to the Bible for more information.  When I got to the letter Z, I noticed that the opposite page had a list of Bible references for all of the letters of the alphabet.  I was excited that they did include this.  Perhaps the only change I would make is to add them in a smaller font size on each page, but that is just me.

This book has so much potential for use in Sunday School, in home schooling, and parents who want to teach their children their alphabet and introduce stories from the Bible as well.  There is a 64p. activity book that can be purchased in addition to this book.  This is a great resource at many levels because it not only teaches the alphabet but it also begins to build a solid foundation of Scripture knowledge for the children as well as perhaps the new believing parent.

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