EDUCATION: Skeptic's Annotated Bible

You may not have seen this, but I stumbled upon the Skeptic's Annotated Bible today. This is such a cool resource! Why? Because it's annotated with questions and remarks from a skeptic. It's clear that the skeptic did not read much, try to make any connections, or try to understand, and this is great because we can use it to give middle or high school students practice at responding to the comments and questions. You can project the info, cut and paste sections, or create a handout with the NOTES and let kids use their own Bibles. Give it a try!

H.S. ACTIVITY: God is in Control

Download Sample

Many high school students struggle these days because of their rigorous schedules and the expectations that they be "fabulous" all the time and "successful" at whatever they do. Everyone wants to be the smartest, most beautiful, most popular, etc. We see everybody's best life all over social media and we can hardly keep from comparing our lives to the lives of others. We see everybody's parents gushing over the accomplishments of their children and might wonder why our parents don't gush over us. Add to that the lovely behavior of politicians and society when things don't go their way and suddenly everybody is living with high anxiety. How should life be? What in life is important? How will I be successful? Will people like or even love me? What if I'm a big failure? What if I'm not as smart as everybody else? What if I'm not funny? What if... what if... what if?

We all need to be reminded that God is ultimately in control of our lives. The best we can do is make wise choices in the areas we can control and trust God with the rest, but it's hard. We think we're supposed to do all the "right" things. Sometimes we need to be reminded that 1) there are things we can control, 2) there are things we can't control, and 3) God is ultimately in control. As long as we believe that we have no worries. 

This activity is to provide kids with something they can keep in their room to remind them that they can only control so much. You'll need lots of colored markers and large white pieces of paper, one for each student. Here's what you do: 

Download jpg here

1. Print the white paper and give one to each student. 
2. Talk to kids about control, what they can and can't control. Basically they can only control themselves and nothing about other people. They make their own choices and sometimes they affect others. That's why we need to trust God. 
3. Fill in the circle with things they can control. 
4. Since God controls everything. Have them look up and choose one of the verses below as their verse of calmness (that may not be a word). They should put it on the poster and memorize it.

Verses:  

Psalm 23:4, Psalm 27:1, Psalm 34:4, Psalm 46:1, Psalm 56:3, Psalm 118:6-7, Proverbs 16:9, Isaiah 41:10, Isaiah 43:1, Matthew 6:34, John 14:27, John 16:33, Romans 8:28, Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 10:13, Philippians 4:6-7, 1 Peter 5:7, 2 Timothy 1:7

H.S. YOUTH: Transgender

A number of years ago I was leading a Bible study and the topic of homosexuality came up. There was a girl who had decided that God was wrong about it. Obviously, she thought God could be wrong. I didn't have time to delve into it at the time, but I did make sure I told the pastor what happened so that he might have a conversation with her about it and perhaps answer some of her questions. That's when I decided that it was important to bring up some of the social topics that were or seemed so obvious to adults. Today transgender is one of those topics. There are two issues at stake, one is biblical and the other is social.

• Everybody wants everybody to be okay. 
• Nobody wants to be the one who is accused of being a Christian who doesn't love everybody and everything because God is love. 

The problem is that while God is love and He loves everybody, He doesn't love everything we do. He doesn't love every choice we make, though He knows that our world is full of sin and that's why HE found a way to cleanse us through His SON. 

There are some amazing resources out there discussing this and below are two of them: the video and a link to the blog of an LCMS man who struggled with being transgender and Christian. It is amazing! It's a lot to read, but he wrote letter to the LCMS, to the CTCR, and it clearly shows his struggle through scripture. Be sure not to miss his post for Good Friday 2019!

Eilers Pizza transgender blog


 

H.S. YOUTH: Raising Your Sons With Respect

We all know that men and women are different. They just are. We are motivated by different things and were created that way: (Ephesians 5) Wives respect your husbands, husbands love your wives. When they know they are respected, men feel better about themselves and step up their game. When they know they are loved, women feel better about themselves and step up their game.

This applies to how you raise your children as well. Often these days we see women not understanding how to respect their husbands, but also their sons as they grow to be men. Your sons know you love them, but do they know you respect them? How can you make sure they do? 

Part 1

Part 2

The Art of Teaching Sunday School: Introduction

One of the Hebrew (causative) words for ‘to teach’ in the Bible is LAMAD and it means to cause to learn. Whether child or adult, that’s what our goal is when leading or facilitating a Bible study. We want to cause people to learn something new or challenge them in some way so that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, their faith grows or deepens. There are four areas people (children and adults) change or grow through education (Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 2011):

• skills (they learn how to do something new)
• behavior (they choose to do something differently)
• knowledge (they have more information to apply to their lives)
• attitude (they come away a changed person).

     Education is a vital part of God’s church as we are told in the Great Commission to baptize and teach (Matthew 28:16-20). Parents are to teach their children as they sit in their homes, or as they go by their way, when they lie down and when they rise up (Deuteronomy 6:7). Before there were books or Sunday School lessons, every parent was to tell the story of their people, our people. It’s the story of a God who never turns away. As Russ Ramsey describes it in Behold the Lamb of God (2011),

“It is a story of evil against good, of darkness locked in an epic struggle to snuff out the light forever. It is a tale filled with people in trouble, all living somewhere between wandering and homecoming, between devastation and restoration, between transgression and grace. Every mortal character in the story needs rescue, but they have all turned aside, and together they have become corrupt. After clearing away all the levels of intrigue, conflict, and suspense facing mankind, this story is a story of divine love. It is a story of the one true God calling a people his beloved, though they’ve lived in perpetual rebellion against him. Though their lives were a ruin of their own making, God swore a covenant oath to redeem them. Everything wrong with the world he would put right. He would remove their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh, putting a new spirit within them. And he would never, ever stop loving them.”

This is the story we are to pass down to our children so they can pass it down to their children.  

     To help parents pass down this story of salvation, congregations developed Sunday school programs, youth groups, opportunities for adult Bible study, etc. How can people share this story or parents pass the story down to their children if they do not know or understand it? They are their child’s greatest influence and the cornerstone of a faithful home.

     In a recent education insert for the LCMS Reporter, a study by the Institute for Religious Education at Concordia University, Nebraska stated that pastors report spending 23% of their time working on the educational ministries of the congregation. The same insert also challenged congregations to focus on lifelong learning and gave a list of the types of practices that “healthy” congregations exhibit (June, 2015). While these are all good things, the question is, if pastors are not trained educators and are not trained regarding education in the seminary, how are they to train the parents? How are they to train their volunteer teachers?

     This book has been written for two simple reasons, the first being that most Sunday School teachers receive little or no training. It is not that they are not provided a curriculum. It is not that they are unfamiliar with Bible stories. It is that nobody really knows how to equip them. Pastors and other church professionals can be very helpful in providing background information about the Bible, history, or topics to be covered, but how does the volunteer translate that information to the appropriate age level? Sometimes teachers are given opportunities to go through the curriculum and ask questions, but for the most part, volunteers don’t know what they don’t know about educating the age group they teach, so they don’t know what questions to ask. They also often struggle with discipline at different developmental levels. One certainly doesn’t discipline a sixth grader the same way they discipline a first grader. What does one do with a disrespectful seven year old in the middle of a once-a-week lesson?

The second reason, and the more serious of the two, is that the purpose of having a building that we call a church is to have a common place to encourage and equip Christians through sacramental worship and Bible study in order that we are strengthened and equipped to bless our families with knowledge of the Bible and the confidence to go out into the world and live and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In order for this to happen, we must equip those who teach and lead Bible study at any age. What do they need to know?

Over the years, Sunday School has been simple education. Teachers follow the curriculum they are given, assuming that it will be adequate. The questions are:

• Is what has been done working for children? 

• Are our current methods of teaching adolescents and adults working?

• How can we more appropriately prepare those who teach them, including our leaders?

• What is a good teacher of the faith?

     The first chapter of this book is about how the brain develops or matures and learns. Without understanding how we learn as we mature, we miss out on opportunities to share in ways that people learn best. After the first chapter the book is broken into five stages of learning or spiritual development:  Narrative, Knowledge, Understanding, Reason, and Wisdom.

     In the Lutheran Church we call spiritual development teaching the faith. We teach people of all ages what the Bible says, and why we believe what we believe. Teaching the faith can begin at any age and can have a profound effect on faith in any number of ways. As teachers of the faith we may have students in a class who have had years of exposure to the Bible and those who have never owned or opened one at any age or in any class. They may have strong faith, but are a little behind in their spiritual development.

     There is a distinction between spiritual development and faith. As we grow our ability to understand complex issues and themes grows; we find we can understand some of the deeper meanings in the Bible and the complexities of theology (the study of and attempt to understand God). We are able to question and discuss complex and often seemingly contrasting Biblical and theological issues. Our ability to understand, however, is not connected to our faith. Faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit that even newborn babies can have. Ironically, we can have our greatest faith when we are young.

Narrative is the stage for children from preschool through second grade. These are the wonderful years when great stories turn into great learning; when they become a part of the child’s world view. Young children become familiar with the Bible by learning its stories and there are a lot of them! It’s not important that they understand everything about them, it’s not important that they can think deeply about them, but it’s important that we lay the groundwork and they become familiar with them. It’s not just God’s story, it’s their story.

Knowledge is the stage for children from third through fifth grade. It is the time of learning more detailed Biblical facts of the stories and talking about them, laying the groundwork for advanced study. Children at this age are seeing a bigger, more complex world and have questions. Who are the disciples and what was their purpose? Who is Noah and what can we learn from his story? Where did Paul go on his journeys and what happened to him? They start asking who God is, why Jesus died for us, and who or what the Holy Spirit is. Going over the same stories they learned about when in the narrative stage, students see them as bigger and more complex than they were before and begin to understand more of the details.

Understanding is the stage of sixth through eighth grade; the confirmation years. It’s at this stage that we begin to think more analytically. While still important to know, the facts become less important than why things happened. Students think more logically and notice when things don’t make sense to them. Why did God flood the earth? Why were the people so evil? What does it mean to be righteous? Why does God need us to be holy? Couldn’t God just make everything okay? The implications of the stories begin to have much deeper meaning and we want to encourage questions. Students seek to understand the Bible more fully as it taps into how they feel or think about what they know about the Bible and the world.

Reason is for ninth through twelfth grades and college students. It builds on the first three stages, using knowledge and understanding to really dig deep and try to see how what we know applies directly to our lives. In high school students begin searching for the truth of life, which is directly related to the scriptures. A lot is going on in their bodies and lives at this time as they begin to become independent. They no longer want to be told what to do, think, or believe. They want to believe it on their own. They are developing reason and judgment and deciding what is true or false. The world and a lot of untruth is at their feet, or more accurately, their fingertips. At this stage allowing them to ask, and answering their questions becomes very important. How do we do that? How do we ask questions that will really get them to think? How do we challenge their faith so that they become comfortable and confident in it?

Wisdom is the stage of adulthood. The brain has fully matured, we know the stories, have thought about them and learned from them and have finally reached the point of wisdom. We’re done! Not at all. The truly wise know that where faith is concerned, learning only ends once we are in the presence of the Lord. Only then will we truly understand. Teaching or learning as an adult, however, is different from when we were children or teenagers. It is in this stage that we shift from having to attend Bible study because we are told to by our parents, to wanting to learn. As He draws us to Him, we have a desire to know more and the only way we can do that is to dig deeper into scripture.

How do adults learn? What keeps them coming back? Can how we teach affect their desire to learn more? How does one create an atmosphere that piques their interest, challenges their comfort in what they believe, and encourages them to continue coming to learn more? From the stories we’ve heard our whole lives, as an adult they become infinitely more fascinating and interesting. How do we equip and encourage people to teach as if they believe that? These questions are what this book is all about.

So, dear teachers of the faith, whether you teach five year olds, teenagers, or adults, this book is what you’ve been hoping for. It will give you confidence that whatever curriculum you have, you can use it to its fullest. It is time to set aside the dry read-a-story-and-paste-paper-together lesson and begin something that will be meaningful to each child at every grade level, from preschool through adult.

Curious? Find the book on Amazon this spring.

PARENTS: Praying For Your Adult Children

I married a man with 8 teenage to adult children who are all very independent. While they don't think so, I know they still need guidance. We When we got married the youngest was 13 and the oldest was 28 and had 3 kids of her own. It's a challenge to be a stepmom at that stage. They were/are very independent and It was just time for them to start making their own decisions and living with the choices, which is really hard for a parent, even a new stepparent. We only have one in the house now and I still worry and pray. I've written prayers, created bookmarks, and even wrote a booklet for praying for your children for safety, wisdom, courage, integrity, faith, forgiveness, and guidance.

Then, I was recently reading a book called Praying the Scriptures for Your Adult Children by Jodie Berndt and got a really great idea. She recommends choosing a Bible verse to pray for each of your children for a year and see how God works in their lives. You can do this by either buying a bunch of bookmarks (100 for about $11 on Amazon) or put them on post-its (I would get the 2x sticky ones) on your bathroom or bedroom mirror. You can even get colored tassels if you want! 

At some point our kids grow up and leave our direct influence, but the Holy Spirit never leaves them! As I say in the booklet,

"Life can be difficult, happiness fleeting, relationships challenging, tragedy unexpected, and worldly success out of reach. Sometimes it's hard to know what to pray. Our kids will be happy if they follow their Lord. They will find purpose in his will. In him alone will they find true peace and joy. If they seek him, they will define success as he defines it; humility, obedience, compassion, and love."