Nick looks at how we join these stories up, allowing children to explore the wider narrative of what God is doing through history rather than seeing God’s involvement with the people in the Bible as a series of disconnected events. He suggests that when we do the latter, we focus on the ‘hero figures’ of each story and lose the fact that the story is primarily about God. This had never struck me before and as much of what I do with children tends to centre around using stories, Nick has challenged me to think again about how God is shown to feature in the story as more than just an ‘extra’.
I believe that as we help children engage with the Bible, we need to equip them with tools to last a lifetime rather than with lightweight fluff that won’t stand up against life’s trials. I remember my daughter coming back from a children’s group having coloured in a picture of a lion that was labelled: ‘God always keeps me safe’. This patently isn’t true, but it was a simple thing someone thought a child could understand from the story of Daniel, and so it made it onto the worksheet. Equally I’ve seen a major resource reduce the incredible story of the child king Josiah – who after a run of kings each more evil that the last restored Israel to God’s ways by rediscovering the book of the law – reduced to: ‘Jesus likes it when we read’.
I hope that the Theology Toolkit included in each edition of Childrenswork will help you to understand the Bible better, and in turn equip you to do some justice to its depth of meaning in your children’s ministry setting. I know it does for me.
