Tips for Online Sunday School

It’s not an ideal situation to be in - where you can’t safely teach kids in Suday School face to face. You can’t see if they’re engaging with you, activities are tricky to organise and impossible to supervise and it’s hard to ask or answer questions - a staple for Sunday Schools!

I’ve written, prepared and filmed somewhere over thirty online Sunday School lessons now - including a few in German which I’m still not fluent in - and, through trial and error, I’ve worked out some important questions to ask myself as I prepare.

For the Story

• Where does this happen? Who is there? What has just happened? What is about to happen?

• What is the main point of the passage? (You can find more detail on this step in my ‘How to …’ guide)

• What apects of the Bble passage need to be focussed on to get this main point across? (And if it’s a long passage what can you leave out without altering the story while still supporting the point?)

• How can you best tell the story? Reading the text (from the Bible or a kids Bible), acting it out, with pictures, with playmobile or lego figures? Write with the best possible method in mind and then work out how to make it happen afterwards.

For the Talk

• Would the youngest child watching be able to hear and understand the main point?

• For older children how can you break the main point into smaller sections?

• Can you predict any problems or difficulties with this message? If so help them to deal with them now.

• What would you like them to change in their life as a result hearing this main point? Tell them and ask them about how it might look in their lives.

For Prayers, Songs and Activities.

• Do they relate to your text and support the main point?

• Can they be done without requiring special equipment?

• Do they need parents help? How can you support parents in this?

Many, many prayers for you in producing online teaching for kids - you can check out the Digital Sunday School lessons I’ve made here:
Series 1: Healing
Series 2: You Can Trust God because

Feel free to use them as they are, to watch them for inspiration before making your own, or to edit the sections you need into your own videos. Happy Teaching!

Important questions

Filming the first lesson in a new series of the Digital Sunday School this week had me rather distracted by the ‘how’ questions. How do I film my hands without a tripod? How do I make what I’m saying visually translate on to the screen? How can I make this homemade camera phone bipod stable and not casting an awkward shadow? How do I include a diverse representsion of who Christians are in this project? How will I be able to make more than one video a week? How have I lost [insert whatever I needed at that moment] again?!

To balance the self-centered and panic inducing ‘How’ questions I decided to write myself a list of important questions that I should focus on first when preparing a lesson. Yes, those how questions still need answering. But having a list like this puts them in their proper place; at the bottom of my to do list.

• Does what I’m preparing come from the Bible or from my own head?

• Is the gospel on display?

• What does God want to teach me in this?

• How can I say this in a way that a range of kids will understand?

• What are the challenges of this text?

• Am I glorifying God or myself?

• Will this build up the church, locally and worldwide?

These are probably not the only things I should be thinking about but it’s certainly a good place to start. I also have 10 steps to prepare a passage for teaching which I find helpful in prioritising these kinds of questions as well.

Some thoughts on healing

I’ve been ill for a few years now. (Don’t worry: it’s not super serious or debilitating, it’s just also not going anywhere). And creating twenty video lessons for Sunday School kids about healing made me consider what I should learn about healing. So…

• It’s good to ask for healing.
  There is definitely a part of me that doesn’t want to. Partly because I’m inspired by my friends with chronic illnesses or disabilities visibly grow closer to God through their experiences but also serve others in a way that is because of rather than instead of. Partly because miraculous healing has been concentrated in specific times in the Bible (Elijah and Elisha, Jesus, and the early church) and we’re not living in one of those times and I don’t want to ask and have God say ‘No’. But narrowing down all the healings in the Bible to just twenty took was a hard job that left me in no doubt that God, who understands and experienced suffering and pain, wants to heal us.

• Healing is not the most important thing.
  Most of the healings recorded in detail in the Bible are there to make a point, about God’s power, his character, his faithfulness. Or that Jesus is the very same God, and that the Spirit is God still at work through other people. If all I want is healing my focus is too narrow and I’ll miss him.

• Healing is for more than just our bodies.
  The most obvious example is the paralysed man who is lowered through a roof to recieve both healing and forgiveness. But I loved the chance to look at Psalm 22 and see the emotional and mental healing that David reaches out to God for. I picked Psalm 147:3 for a memory verse because God doesn’t merely bind up their wounds but he heals the broken hearted. My sorrow and suffering and mental health matter just as much to God any other parts of my body that don’t work as they should.

• One day I will be healed.
  At the moment my healing is in a ‘maybe’ state: Maybe the medicine will actually be effective all the time. Maybe we’ll recognise a trigger that I can just avoid. Maybe God will answer my prayers miraculously. Maybe I’ll have the surgery and it’ll be the rare occasion where it doesn’t need to be repeated every few years. Maybe… just maybe. DEFINATELY God is preparing a new heaven and a new earth that will be perfect in every way with no death or pain! DEFINATELY I will be made like Jesus in all ways including a resurrection body that won’t suffer decay. DEFINATELY I will live for all eternity with the God who designed and made me, the God who has healed far bigger and far worse, the perfect God who will have made all things perfect and DEFINATELY the fact that my body works again won’t even be top of the list of wonderful things in that place!

I hope that if you’ve watched the videos that your family will have been encouraged by much more than God’s ability and willingness to heal but that what I’ve learnt will help you talk about the healing side of things. I hope that if you’re disabled, chronically ill, suffering at the moment or wandering what to make of healing in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic that this will help to remind you of a few helpful truths. And for me on days when it’s particularly painful, hard to be ill or I’m feeling sorry for myself I’ve got somewhere to come and remind myself to take it all to God and leave it in his very capable hands.

A brief thought about reading the Bible

Far too often I assume that I already know what the Bible is going to say. After all, I’ve known these stories since I was a kid, I’ve read them and studied them as an adult, I’ve taught these passages to others. This is particularly true of the gospels.

So imagine my surprise at being surprised on reading John 18:15-16 and seeing that John “was known to the high priest.”

MIND BLOWN!

How was this a detail I had never noticed before?! It’s part of one of the most famous passages in the Bible! I am frequently too confident in my own abilities as a Bible student to actually see what is in the text. Shame on me that I still have this attitude. But also praise God who is still able to surprise me with the glories of his word and his plan!

***

For those of you who are interested in this detail I discovered for myself: let’s do a little bit of unpacking.

• The unnamed disciple is probably John who tends to obscure his involvement in the story (See John 19:26) and also turn up with Peter before all the other disciples (See John 20:3).

• How was this disciple known to the high priest? Well it’s not 100% clear if the high priest refferred to here is Caiaphas, who was currently serving in the role, or Annas, ex-high-priest and current father-in-law-to-the-high-priest. Either way it’s likely that he’d be known to both, whichever is particularly intended here. It’s unlikely that their lives crossed at work - I can’t see either Annas or Caiaphas buying their own fish - ad they probably weren’t chummy not least because Jesus and John are besties and the high priest is has been trying for a while to kill Jesus. They could be related; there is at least one John in the family (Acts 4:6) and names tended to be passed down. But that would make it strange that Luke doesn’t mention this while John and Peter (together again) are on trial in that chapter. Although it would make it super awkward if they were!

• Why does it matter? It’s not a big deal in the story but it does shed light on why John would include different details in his account. For instance it is only John who knows that Peter cuts off Malchus’ ear, no-one else knows his name but they do know that he’s a servant of the high priest. It also might explain why no-one challenges John as being a disciple of Jesus in the way that they do Peter. He’s known to them in a different context and might even enjoy some privilege there - after all they let a stranger in on his word.

I love the little details in the Bible, and I’m so glad that the Spirit included them. They humble me, allow me to see the reality of te events and people in the Bible and they glorify the God who pays attention to every little detail of our world.

5 free Bible-based resources for kids at home

A ‘normal’ Sunday School probably involves singing, sharing for prayer, a craft, maybe a game and at the very least a Bible Story with a chance to ask questions about what it means for us. Church services have often moved to some kind of streaming which works great for sermons but less well for small group situations.

That all becomes very tricky when you’re stuck at home with kids who might normal be split by age into different groups and with only the crafting implements you would normally have. Leave a comment with any resources you’ve found useful.

So here we have 5 resources that can help you to do Sunday School at home.

Let’s start by blowing my own trumpet: On this very website there’s a series of Digital Sunday School lessons which include a story, questions to link it to our lives today, memory verses, links to youtube videos for singing together and some crafty, and less crafty, activities you can try throughout the day or week.
At the moment there are four available and producing two more a week seems like a sustainable pace to keep up with so you could do a midweek Bible lesson if you wanted. The series will be 20 lessons long and each lesson is based on God healing someone - wonder where I got that idea!

1. Digital Sunday School

Ages 5-10

2. Big Picture Bible Crafts

Ages 3-10

If you’re looking for craft resources my friend Gail Schoonmaker, illustrator of the Big Picture Story Bible, has written a book, Big Picture Bible Crafts that takes you through the major plotpoints in craft form. The book is excellent and Crossway Publishers have made it available free on PDF (although I would definitely recommend buying it for the long haul if, like me, you’re a Bible teacher who isn’t strong on the craft side). Each craft comes with a resource list, a Bible passage a memory verse and how you can adjust it for different ages and abilities!

My go-to videos for Bible Stories are Crossroads Kids Club. The God’s Story series are short, thoughtful, with high quality animation and designed to show how this individual story fits in to God’s greater rescue plan. They’ve made loads of them, I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find one that fits in with any other material you are or have been using.

3. Crossroads Kids Club

Ages 3-12

4. Olly Knight Worship Music

All ages

If you want some family friendly music Olly Knight and family are producing regular worship sessions live on Facebook (they also post the lyrics) - they’re chatty, they’ll read the comments and praise Jesus. So why not grab whatever instruments you have and your dancing feet and join in.

The Village Church is super committed to Bible Education run by the church and has a massive selction of resources you should check out. Including a podcast for kids! Originally designed to be something you could play on a car journey they’d be great for younger kids at home as well. They are very American so come with a healthy dollop of cheese, but when that dollop is on a serving of easy to understand, well grounded Bible stories form John, then it’s very stomachable. They even include original songs. Search for God’s Big Story wherever you get your podcasts from.

5. God’s Big Story Podcast

Ages 3-8