I still remember the kids’ team meeting for The Gospel Project where we looked through the list of Bible stories we were going to introduce to kids. Session 5 was the story of Job, not a story you come across very often in typical kids’ Bible studies.
The decision to tell kids – even preschoolers – the story of Job wasn’t hard to make. We’d already decided that we wanted to challenge kids with The Gospel Project material. If we were doing a lesson on Obadiah, why not Job?
But how would we make the Christ connection? Would we really introduce a big word like “mediator” to 3- and 4-year-olds? Here’s what we wanted to tell kids:
Job’s suffering and his request for a mediator give us a glimpse of our Savior, Jesus. Neither Job nor Jesus experienced suffering because they sinned. Unlike Job, Jesus never questioned why He had to suffer. Jesus understood that we needed Him to pay the price for our sin and be our mediator before God.
I remember thinking about my daughter, Julia, as we had this conversation. She was three at the time. My wife and I were frequent fill-in teachers for Julia’s preschool group in our church. I saw those cute, rambunctious kids in my mind as we discussed how to present the story of Job and the Christ connection.
The question came up, “Will a preschooler have a clue what we’re talking about? How much of the story will they get?” After some good discussion, we decided they probably wouldn’t understand it all.
So did we ditch the idea? No. Instead, we decided to introduce the word “mediator” to preschoolers. We would simplify the Christ-connections for preschoolers, and we’d make sure we explain what big words mean, but we would not shy away from a four-syllable word that helped point them to Christ.
Taking the Long View of Bible Teaching
In the end, we made a decision to take the long view with regard to Bible teaching instead of just thinking about individual lessons. We are fully aware that some words or phrases will go right over kids’ heads. I don’t expect my daughter to come home explaining to me in great detail what a mediator is. But the next time she goes through this story (in three years), she’ll already have a big word in the back of her mind. Then the third time she goes through The Gospel Project, as a fifth-grader, she’ll get it. At least, that’s what we hope and pray.
All that to say… we recognize that some of the material is challenging. That’s by design. We want to introduce important theological concepts, knowing that kids might not understand everything all at once. But our hope is that when they go through the curriculum a second time (when they’re young kids), they’ll already have a base and some of it will be familiar. By the third time through (when they’re older kids), they will have it down.
At the same time, we want teachers to adapt this curriculum to the needs of their kids. The Gospel Project is not meant to shackle teachers to an outline but to free them up to personalize it and make it as accessible as they can. The point isn’t filling little heads with theological knowledge but introducing little hearts to the God who has revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ.
Big Words for Little Hearts
Every night, I pray the Lord’s Prayer with my kids. Right now, Julia is four. She knows the words by heart. And yes, I know she is praying big words like “hallowed,” “kingdom,” “debts,” and “temptation,” words she doesn’t quite understand.
What to do? Should I steer clear from the Lord’s Prayer? Not at all.
I’m praying my daughter grows up into those words. I look at her the same way I look at a kid trying on mama’s shoes. The feet are too small and the shoes are too big, but one of these days, she’ll grow up and they’ll fit. That’s how we pray. That’s why we introduce foundational biblical truths. That’s why we teach our kids the Bible stories that challenge their assumptions, raise expectations, and point them to Jesus.
Small kids need big words. Not because they understand everything all at once but because, over time, God uses the inspired words of His Book to convict kids of sin and convince them to repent and believe in Christ.
Repent and believe. Those are big words too. That’s why even now I’m praying for the day those two big words represent the reality of my kids’ little hearts.
I absolutely agree. that’s been my philosophy for a long time – we are building a foundation and they won’t understand everything the first time they hear it, but then neither do adults.
It still makes me very sad that you decided not to do all of Gospel Project on the same Scripture weekly, at least in some form so the entire family can learn about the same basic thing! You could teach a form of systematic theology to a preschooler, at least on a smaller level. You could use a piece of the lesson, if not the whole thing. You almost did it on lesson one with creation being for the children and God speaks being the adults. We didn’t realize until lesson two that they were trying to find a common link. I think you missed an excellent opportunity . . . and for the record, all of our staff thought it was going to be that way when we decided to go with it,and sold it to our church that way. We were very disappointed to learn differently! I hope eventually this can be worked out.
having said that, we are liking the curriculum based on the first two weeks. Thanks for this article!
Terry Zimmerman
Having worked briefly with your preschool lessons on Abraham and Sarah and having some detailed discussions with our preschool leadership, I would like to make some comments. While I agree with your stated purposes in theory, I find reality to be a bit different. If you were teaching preschoolers who ALL came from families with consistent weekly attendance who also actually followed the intended weekly family follow-up materials this would work well. Our reality is quite different so this means we are having to rewrite almost every lesson to be sure that it is presented in a manner which our preschoolers can actually understand since they may never hear it again. This means we often cannot use the story videos because they contain way too much information which is not appropriate to our situation. We love introducing big words and big concepts such as covenant, mediator and descendants so preschoolers have a solid biblical foundation upon which to build, however we find it almost impossible to capture their attention for the length of time necessary to completely work through all your suggested story material. We are clever and creative in our teaching approach but this means we are not using what we paid for and are having to find substitutes for presentation as well as content. This leaves us wondering why we are paying for this material in the preschool departments. It would be more cost effective for us to only purchase the materials for elementary use and then do what we are already doing by condensing it down for use with younger children. This does require much weekly work so we must also evaluate if all this work is worth the time when we find that our families are not really taking the time to do the home follow-up anyway. We are about to conclude that perhaps we will look for an alternative curriculum which takes our preschoolers through the Bible every two years with much more preschool friendly and appropriate stories and teaching helps. This gives them an introduction to what they will get in more detail in the elementary years IF they continue on through our Sunday School consistently as we pray, but it also insures they are actually receiving and understanding the foundational lessons right now so if this is all they get at least they get it fully. This is not meant to be a putdown of your material, rather it is to give you insight into our thought process which has been given much prayer and consideration. Sincerely, Sue Thurston
Thanks for your feedback, Sue. It’s been passed on to our team.
We are in the same situation as Sue.