Author: Dr. John C. Kwasny
One of the distinctives of our Investigating God’s Word… Children’s Sunday School curriculum is that it teaches ALL of God’s Word over seven years. Most children’s curricula are designed to only cover the “major” stories of Scripture, over and over, to ensure that children learn the most important content. This raises the question of how one decides which stories are major and which ones are minor. One Story Ministries avoids that dilemma by choosing to teach children the entire Bible.
The holy, inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God is a huge book—a book of sixty-six books to be exact. In most of our English translations, those books are broken down into 1,189 chapters with a total of 31,102 verses. This is an overwhelming amount of content for children (or anyone) to learn! On top of all that, the Bible presents such a variety of literary genres, from the clearer to the more complex, which makes it more challenging. And then, there are many who argue that children should only be taught things that are simple and concrete, especially in a time where reading comprehension is on the decline.
So, if we have the conviction that children need to learn all of God’s Word, how can we teach them the whole Bible without overwhelming them? First, we recognize the need to teach God’s Word to children in bitesize portions. This requires a commitment to a long span of time to encounter the whole Bible. Investigating God’s Word… divides the content of God’s Word into seven years, fifty-two Sundays a year, for a total of 364 lessons. That makes the teaching the entire Bible a possibility.
Secondly, the design of the Bible as progressive revelation helps us to not overwhelm children. The easier, or more concrete, content of God’s Word occurs at the beginning of the Old and New Testament. Genesis through Esther are mainly historical narratives, written in a way for children to follow the story. Matthew through Acts in the New Testament are mainly stories of Jesus, the disciples, and the early church. So, younger children can take in a large number of stories, leaving the more challenging content (poetry, prophecy, epistles, etc.) for them when they are older.
Third, the way we teach God’s Word keeps children from being overwhelmed. When we simply read a whole story at a time or even a modern paraphrase of the story, we keep children passive in the process. Investigating God’s Word… leads teachers to read a few verses at a time, stopping along the way to make observations and interpretation. This method keeps children actively involved by way of questions and answers, preventing them from mentally checking out due to too much information.
Finally, we keep children from being overwhelmed by teaching God’s Word with application all along the way. Even though much of the Bible is story, it is meant to teach us about God first and ourselves second. So, children should learn from an early age that God’s Word is for them and for their lives. The Bible is to be applied to our hearts as it is studied, making it a living book, empowered by the Holy Spirit!
Teaching all of God’s Word to children is well worth our time and their time. By God’s grace, it is not designed to be an information dump that happens all at one time. Instead, it is to be a slow and gradual process, verse upon verse, chapter upon chapter, story upon story. As the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of our children, the parts come together to form the whole—the one story of redemption in Jesus Christ! Rather than being overwhelmed by the immensity of the Bible, we long for our children to be delighted in its glories riches for them.