Preparing the Children's Church Bible Lesson

The children's church Bible lesson is one of the most important components of your children's church hour, one upon which I could build an entire website!

The most important advice I can give in regards to preparing your children's church Bible lesson is that you must keep in mind that you are preparing a lesson for two types of children in your ministry: the saved and the lost. You cannot neglect either one. This is of utmost importance.

You can take absolutely any story in the Bible and use it to meet the needs of both of these groups in your children's church. In order to do so, you must:

• Insert the Gospel into every lesson

• Select one Main Teaching that will challenge & help your saved kids

To give a basic example I will use the story of Noah's Ark. Is there a natural place to insert the Gospel into this well-known Bible story? Of course there is!

In essentially any story within the Bible, it is possible to insert the four basic gospel truths (in any order):

• God loves you.

• Everyone is a sinner, and sin has a penalty.

• Jesus Christ paid the price for you.

• You must believe and receive Him.

What you will want to do is smoothly weave these four truths in and out of your children's church Bible lesson without making your children feel that you’ve strayed from the Bible story at all. This is done using “linking statements” that carry your listener out of the lesson into a moment of teaching about a particular truth and then back into the lesson in a very coherent manner.

God told Noah to build an ark so that his family would not be destroyed by the flood. God has made a way for us to be saved, too… (and then you would proceed to explain how that Jesus Christ made a way for us to be saved from sin and its penalty).

I will definitely expound on this more in the future and give you specific help with preparing and outlining your lesson. However, if you are not currently thinking on these two things when you prepare your lesson each week, please begin to do so now. The children's chruch Bible lesson is your greatest opportunity to both reach your children's church kids with the gospel and to disciple those who are already saved.