My wife and I were guest presenters at a workshop ogranised by NTM Asia. The topic was teaching the Bible chronologically to children--what that means, how to teach, what kind of activities teachers could use to make the lessons more interesting. There were close to 40 teachers packed into the small NTM office and boy, it turned out to be quite an exciting session.
The teachers were full of great questions on how to engage the kids to get them interested and on how to teach some of the 'harder' truths of the Bible in a manner that young children could understand. Many of them told us they were inspired and set on fire by the passion and enthusiasm we showed.
We felt very blessed that they responded so positively. We could see God lighting the fire in them when we shared from our own experiences. Some of the teachers were so excited, they wanted us to go over to their churches to give the same presentation, in order for the rest of their teachers to catch the fire too. That really moved us because it was confirmation from God that we were doing what he wanted us to do: teach and disciple children and new believers. And it was exciting to think we could now help others be as passionate in reaching out to children and getting them to get a clear understanding of the Gospel message via 'chron teaching'.
Chronological teaching by the way, is simply telling God's story the way he revealed himself: through the course of history, incident by incident, slowly building on man's understanding. It was what Jesus did as he walked with Cleopas and the other disciple on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-27). For us, we have seen such great understanding from the children whom we have taught this way. We are grateful God has given us a simple way to teach his story.
