7 Ways to Make Your Bible Teaching Relevant
Children need a personal connection to the Bible lessons you’re teaching. You need to engage them emotionally, or they will not only disengage and quickly forget, but they’ll lose the motivation to try. If they don’t believe what you’re teaching is interesting, relevant, and something they can put into action, then it’s probably not going to sink in. When you make spiritual truths relevant, they’re easier to learn.
‘A typical children’s ministry will touch upon 20 to 40 specific Bible episodes in a given year. As a child ages and works his or her way through the program, the classes return to most of those stories but without significantly varying the presentation angle or the point of the story.
An unfortunate result of this repetitiveness is that teachers lose their freshness and send a message to students that the Bible has a limited array of lessons to convey. We found that students are likely to feel that they are not learning anything new, leading to the impression that they already know everything of value there is to know about the Christian faith. (That is, in fact, the belief of three-quarters of all churchgoing adolescents – and raises unfortunate implications for those young people.)’
Barna, G. 2003, ‘Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions’, Regal Books, California. pp109.
The latest music, games and humour are great for attracting children’s attention. But if your Bible teaching is not practical, and well explained, the children will only remember the dance moves and who won the game. Your job is to help children realise Bible truths are worth knowing. And that will hold their attention, too.
- Use suspense. Drop hints or clues. Use pauses and facial expression to add intrigue.
- Keep it fresh. Children interpret the work you put into a lesson as care. They respond to your care by caring about you and what you teach.
- Be hands on when possible. E.g. introduce a mystery object.
- Connect to their lives and what they already know. Ask for their experiences. ‘Have you ever been…?’
- Show what you’re teaching is relevant to their future. ‘One day you could find yourself…’
- Be enthusiastic about what you’re teaching. There’s no downside to being ten percent more enthusiastic.
- Invite guest speakers who can give a testimony about truths you’re teaching (e.g. Healing)
Build strong relationships with the children in your Kid’s ministry. If children like you, they will value what you value. They see what you’re teaching as worth learning, because you see it as worth knowing. Relevance is especially important to those children who are made to attend Kid’s Church. Your teaching will help them see how useful the Bible can be and how it will help them in their lives now and in the future.
It’s your job, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to help children see the relevance of what you’re teaching them. Then they’ll engage during the lesson and be motivated to use spiritual truths in their daily lives. If you can’t show your children how relevant the Bible is to them, it may seem unnecessary.