Excerpted From
Keeping Your Children’s Ministry on Mission
By Jared Kennedy
3 Ways to Teach a Bible Story to Children
As teachers, we have an incredible responsibility. The Bible tells us that we incur a stricter judgment (James 3:1). God has entrusted the next generation into our hands. But what will the kids in our classrooms remember after we’ve finished teaching? What characters in the story will they most want to identify with and be like? How will they grow in their understanding of God and the gospel?
Let’s walk through three different ways you could teach a Bible story.
Approach #1: The Example Lesson
The most natural place for children’s ministry teachers to begin is to look at a Bible story and think about what models should be followed—or avoided. This is the example lesson. This is a perfectly legitimate way to think about the Bible text. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul recounts the story of Israel’s journey through the wilderness. He tells how the Israelites were given the benefits of salvation through the sea and how God provided spiritual food for them and water from the rock (vv. 1–4). Nevertheless, a whole generation died in the wilderness due to God’s judgment on their idolatry and grumbling (vv. 5–10). Paul warns the Corinthians they may also incur God’s judgment if they revert to setting their hearts on evil things (v. 6). He writes, “Now these things happened to them [the Israelites] as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (v. 11).
If Paul was content to use an example lesson, we can too! With an example lesson, kids will identify with the hero or villain, and they’ll learn examples to follow or avoid. You’ve probably heard the story of David and Goliath taught in this way. According to this method, the point of the story is to be brave and face big obstacles with courage. Or—in the world of Veggie Tales—“little guys can do big things too!”
When we tell the story this way, kids remember key characters and little details. They may remember how David carried ten loaves of bread to his brothers and ten cheeses to the commander of their unit (1 Sam. 17:17–18)—just the perfect ingredients for making ten pizzas! They’ll remember how David was too little for Saul’s armor (vv. 38–39), how he took five smooth stones and a sling (v. 40), and that he cut off Goliath’s head (v. 51). The kids will also remember to be brave like David, because David is the example to follow.
That’s one way to tell the story. An example lesson makes clear what God wants us to do and what we shouldn’t do. But if we just teach example lessons, what will kids learn about God?
Approach #2: The God-Centered (or Theologically Driven) Lesson
A God-centered or theologically driven lesson helps kids to focus on God as the main character of each Bible story. This approach is grounded in the conviction that the Bible was written to show us who God is and what he’s done for us. Therefore, one of the first things we should ask ourselves when preparing a Bible lesson is this: What is God doing in this story?
When we’re teaching 1 Samuel 17, we shouldn’t forget about David, but that shouldn’t keep us from seeing that God is the true hero in this story. In fact, do you remember what David said to king Saul? “The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine” (v. 37 KJV). When Goliath came against him with a sword and spear and javelin, David didn’t start naming his weapons: “Well, here I come with my sling!” No way! David said, “I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied” (v. 45 NIV). David knows that the battle belongs to the Lord. If we’re listening to David’s words, we begin to understand that this story gives us more than David’s example. It’s a story about God and the salvation he brings.
Teaching God-centered lessons is a vast improvement over only teaching example lessons. But I think teaching only God-centered lessons doesn’t quite go far enough either. All of us know kids—and adults for that matter—who know the truth with their heads but who haven’t had it affect their hearts. I want to suggest an approach that moves beyond theological knowledge to grace- motivated, personal change.
Approach #3: The Gospel-Centered Lesson
The final way to tell a Bible story is the gospel-centered lesson. The apostle Paul makes clear that the gospel message alone is enough for Christian growth. In all his letters, Paul emphasizes that God’s appointed Savior, his Son Jesus Christ, is the main character of the Bible.
But, sadly, it’s possible to teach the Bible without ever talking about Jesus. To the religious leaders in his day, Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39). The ancient scribes and Pharisees wanted Scripture as a book of religious rules and pious examples without having Jesus as their Savior. As parents and teachers of children, it’s our responsibility to find Christ every time we teach children the Bible.
In his book Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, Sidney Greidanus defines the gospel-centered approach as teaching lessons that “authentically integrate the message of the text with the climax of God’s revelation in the person, work, and/or teaching of Jesus Christ as revealed in the New Testament.” Greidanus’s approach assumes two interpretational moves. First, we must understand the purpose for which the original human author told this story to his audience. Second, we need to relate the plot of this story to the Bible’s larger storyline.
How do we go about that task?
I once had a conversation with pastor Marty Machowski and some other children’s ministry leaders about the best ways to craft a gospel-centered lesson. He told us, “We want to understand who in this Bible story needs the good news. Then, we want to help our kids relate to them.” To craft a gospel-centered lesson, we should first help kids identify with the neediest people in the passage, those who are desperate for salvation. We should ask, “Who in this story needs the good news?”
In the David and Goliath story, the people who need salvation the most are the Israelites. They have a strong enemy, Goliath, and a weak leader, King Saul. When Goliath marches out into the valley of Elah to challenge the king, he challenges all of Israel as well as Israel’s God. In that moment, Israel needed a courageous hero to save them. Saul should have been the first soldier on the battlefield to confront Goliath, but he was puny and paralyzed. As a result, his army was paralyzed too.
What does God do to help Israel in their great need?
God sends David. The people there didn’t know it yet, but we know that David stepped onto that battlefield as Israel’s newly anointed king (1 Samuel 16). The shepherd boy from Bethlehem was the people’s representative. When God won the battle for the people, he won the battle through David.
Now that we’ve discovered what God is doing for his needy people in the story, we should relate this passage to the Bible’s larger storyline. In other words, we should look for how God’s action in this little plotline points to what Jesus has done for us in the Bible’s larger story. Jack Klumpenhower has phrased the key question this way: How does God do the same for us—only better—in Jesus?
When you ask this question, you may start to see that David points beyond himself. The boy-savior gives us a sneak peek into a specific way God rescues his people: God saves his people by sending them a representative king, a child from Bethlehem who crushes the head of his enemy. Sound familiar? David is the hero, but David points to Jesus.
By first helping kids identify with the people in the story who need the good news and then looking for the ways God brings good news to these needy people, we discover specific ways Jesus wants to bring good news to us. We discover the particular ways believing the gospel will give us life and hope.
The message of 1 Samuel 17 is good news for us, because, like David, we do fight giants. The kids we teach live in a world of skeptics who speak against our faith. The temptation is to look at the world and believe that what you see is what you get. Christians often have less power and less money, and we may not be as successful as worldly giants; why keep living a godly life and standing against temptation? We can be frozen in insecurity and fear. But we don’t have to be, because there is a boy from Bethlehem who has already cut off the head of our enemy. Knowing Jesus fought for them gives kids confidence. This kind of gospel-centered lesson not only teaches kids how Christ is the central figure of the Bible, but also, in seeing him, they’ll find deep and powerful motivation, the kind which will help them change the way they live.
Excerpted from Keeping Your Children’s Ministry on Mission by Jared Kennedy, ©2022. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
