by Ryan McAdams

I grew up in a typical American church environment, hearing the familiar stories of the Bible many times over, and gaining a fair bit of facts that would serve me well in Bible trivia competitions later. I knew that David had gathered five smooth stones, and that Moses had heralded ten plagues before Pharaoh. I knew the books of the Bible and their order, and even that it contained history. But, I never really made any connections between the contents of the Bible and God, its author. To me, I treated the stories like I treated any other content in a school context: know the facts well enough to pass a test, and then move on with my life.

Today, part of my motivation to serve within the church’s children’s ministries stems from these errors of my youth. I can’t remember the last lesson I taught where the children did not hear a reference to 2 Timothy 3:16, that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. I want them to understand that whichever passage we cover comes from the will of God, and that it has tremendous value for we who learn. This alone can explain why we would teach from books like Leviticus and Lamentations.

But the following verse, 2 Timothy 3:17 explains that the teaching of any part of God’s word benefits the man of God. So, until a child receives saving faith and bows his knee to Jesus, he will not receive the full benefit from a particular passage. More than an appeal to heed God’s Word for the potential benefit, then, I also want to confront each child with God, particularly through his Word.

I can do this with manifold verses and passages, but also by example with my approach to God’s Word, by rightly handling the word of truth, as Paul exhorted Timothy. The children can detect if I haphazardly spray verses around, or if I reverently treat verses with extreme care and precision, showing that I actually believe I am communicating the very words of God. With my handling of the Bible, I want to demonstrate to the students how a Christian interacts with God’s Word, that God deserves reverence and awe.

Placing salvation in God’s hands, I want each child at least to understand the relationship between a Christian and the Bible, that for a child of God, the Bible is the final authority on all matters it addresses; that the Bible does not err or fail in any of the history, facts, judgments, prophesies, or other claims. I want them to understand that to downplay the Bible is to besmirch the character of God, so when they would hear self-proclaimed Christians contradicting God’s Word, it would not confuse them, because they would be able to see the clear delineation between followers of Jesus and those who don’t believe the Bible. Unlike myself as a child, I want each of the children to clearly know where he or she stands before God.