Today, our kids are subject to 1000 different influences that come by way of TV and media, school curriculum, peers and all kinds of social factors.
How much greater would the impact on the development of a child’s character be if you chose to repeat only a few phrases and allowed them to become the core values for how the child processes all the other voices of influence? That is the idea behind how we teach on Sunday morning, and the short list of repeated phrases are these:
I need to make the wise choice.(WISDOM)
I can trust God no matter what. (FAITH)
I need to treat others the way I want to be treated.(FRIENDSHIP)
It’s all part of the 252 basics curriculum that we use as our primary teaching material. Our goal is to provide each child with a biblically grounded reference for figuring out how we relate to each other, and ultimately to God, and to provide mom and dad with the groundwork for expanding on that mindset at home.
Each month we explore a different core character value like kindness, respect, determination, or gratitude, and we discover that the stories in the bible are not only great pictures of God’s faithfulness, but living examples of what those values looks like when they’re lived out under God’s love for us.
What we often find is that at least one of those three basic statements are in some way embedded into almost any lesson, and as they are repeated week after week, our heart for the teaching ministry is that parents will take full advantage of what we begin, and use it to continue shaping their kids at home.
In the end, it all points to one basic target…that our kids grow up with a heart determined to live for the person of Jesus Christ.