You Can Study the Bible

How to use them

Your job is to not explain

Every instinct you have with children points the wrong way here. They ask, you answer; they hesitate, you help; they give half a thought, you finish it. All of that is kindness, and all of it ends the class.

Explaining ends the discovery in the same breath, and what the child keeps is your answer for about a day instead of a method for years. When a child looks at you waiting to be told, wait longer than is comfortable. They are used to school, where somebody always rescues them.

The same story, all six chapters

Four friends dig through a roof. That is the whole text of this class, used again in every chapter, and a room of adults will assume that is a limitation to apologise for.

It is the design. A child who meets six passages learns six stories; a child who works one passage six ways learns the method and takes it home. Say that once to any parent who asks, and then stop defending it.

The retell is the skill, not the reading

Chapter 2 takes longer than it looks and is worth every minute. Two things go wrong there, and both look like success.

The first is reciting — word-for-word, delivered proudly. Send it back for a second telling that sounds like them; a child can carry a memorised paragraph without having understood a line of it. The second is a slow reader quietly falling behind. Read it aloud yourself both times if you need to. Nothing in this class is a reading test.

A name and a day, or it did not happen

Chapter 4 asks two questions — what will I obey, and who will I tell — and it is where the class either lands or evaporates.

The failure is invisible unless you ask for both halves: a commitment with no name and no day. I’ll be nicer is not an answer. I’ll say sorry to my brother, tomorrow is. Give your own first, with a real name and a real day in it, and watch what happens to theirs.

Watch also for the child answering what they think you want. The way out is to ask for the private version — what would this say if the page were never handed in?

Chapter 5 is relief, not permission

Growing is God’s job. Children hear that two ways, and one of them needs correcting.

Some hear relief, which is right — a child who has taken responsibility for somebody else changing is carrying a weight that will crush them, and naming it and handing it back is the work of that session. Others hear it as being let off. Sowing and watering are still theirs to do; the one job that was never on their side of the line is the growing.

Let them run one badly

The last chapter sends them out, and the temptation is to sit in on the first one to make sure it goes well.

Decide in advance that you will not. The goal was never a child who needs you in the room, and a first study that goes badly without you teaches more than a good one with you. Hand them the page and let them go.

Using the two books

The workbook is the child’s: a short lead-in, the questions, and the space to write. Print it front-and-back.

The leader book is this one plus the whole teaching and the facilitator layer — per-chapter timing, what to prepare, and what to watch for. Keep it open in front of you during the session. It carries answers and notes that are not in the child’s book, so hand out the workbook, never this.