Bible Lessons, Telling His Stories

When I get ready to teach a Bible lesson to children I interact with them in this way; "Is the Lion King true or not? Of course it is not! Have you ever seen a lion talk? Is Toy Story true or not? You're right! Most toys do not talk without batteries or pulling a string. How about the movie Iron man? Right again! These are just stories. They are fun to watch but they are not true. Today we are going to tell you a story that is absolutely true! It is from the Bible and the Bible is one hundred percent true all the time."

Media has become a huge part of how children learn. How many generations have grown up learning from Sesame Street? Puppets and Dramas are used worldwide to help us communicate the Bible stories. Many of our adults services are now driven by media. What happens when there is no technology available, your drama team slept in, the puppets were left at your last outreach, and the DVD player bit the dust? It is time to tell His stories!

Teaching Bible lessons by simply telling the stories is becoming lost in the variety of media options available. Most of us would cancel our Children's service if the above situation happened.

Oral communication has become buried in most of our everyday lives. Emails and text messages have become a huge form of communication, especially among young people. Most families have eliminated "dinner time", a place where communication happened and the stories were told. Through all of this we are losing the essential key to most cultures, oral communication. My children are grown now and we live spread out across the country. When we gather at holidays or other events they ask "Pap Pap" (that's me) to tell the grandkids my stories. I have lived an amazing and eventful life and I have a way of seeing humor in almost any situation. I have had many funny things happen to me that my family loves to hear me talk about. The Bible says laughter is medicine to the bones and my family is blessed to be very healthy. We laugh alot!
I have been ministering to children for twenty-some years. I have used every gadget, object lesson, drama, puppet skit, and video throughout the years to teach children the Bible. I still think all of it is necessary and helpful to illustrate the lessons, but these days I try to use the lost art of story telling to teach the main Bible lesson. In this series of blogs I will share some of my reflections, techniques, and styles that I use to tell His stories. Do not go recycle Jumble Jeffrey the puppet! Keep your drama costumes! Keep an open mind and perspective and let us learn again how tell the stories and once again become preachers to the children.