Be Bible detectives!

Introduction

At the heart of all our ministry with children and young people is the Bible. The challenge is in how we journey alongside children and young people in unpacking and exploring what the Bible says and the relevance it has to their lives today. We can use a range of skills to discover more of what the Bible has to offer. Here we suggest several activities and practical suggestions to help children and young people explore the Bible. These could be used in a special one-off session or be introduced as appropriate in your regular weekly sessions. The material may be adapted for different age-groups.

Before you begin

Prepare

Preparation is key to a good session. Take time to read the passages yourself beforehand and read around them to gain background information. Try out the some of the creative suggestions below and go on that journey yourself with the passages you will be using.

Listen

A good leader needs excellent listening skills and the ability to provide a space where children and young people are not nervous or embarrassed to ask questions, explore meanings or to test how relevant the Bible is to their everyday lives. In letting go of our own interpretations and fears about lack of knowledge and understanding of the Bible, we might journey with our children and young people to a deeper richness.

Go deeper

Using prepared questions is one way to start opening up a Bible passage for exploration. It is a little like being a detective: you need to look for clues, ask questions to build up an understanding of what happened and what it means, and how it applies to the lives of children and young people now. Prepare questions that enable children and young people to really get into the passage.

Open questions are great for stimulating group discussion. An open question does not have a right or wrong answer. An example might be: How might people have reacted to Jesus’ action? Using open questions encourages children and young people to share their own answers and thoughts on a passage or story. Create a space where children and young people can explore their personal understanding of the Bible and where they feel free to express questions without fear of being wrong.

Investigate

Pick a book of the Bible or passage and explore it using the following questions. You may also wish to consider if there are any films you could use to illustrate the passage in a slightly different way.

Background questions

• Who are the main characters in the passage?
• What are the main characters’ jobs or roles?
• Who wrote this?
• When was it written?
• Where and when did this happen?
• Who was the passage written for?
• Who was listening?

Context questions

• What do you think life was like for those in the passage?
• How old do you think the people are in the passage?
• Why do you think the passage was written?
• What do you think the message is for the main characters?

Impact questions

• What would be relevant parts of this passage for life now?

Explore the Bible

There are lots of fantastic resources and Bibles designed to help children and young people to interact with the Bible every day. Don’t just be satisfied with using the Bibles at your church. Have a selection of Bibles relevant to the different ages you are working with and encourage the children and young people to take them home each week.

We asked children’s work advisers from different denominations and organisations which translations and versions they would recommend. Many of them suggested the New International Version, The Message and the Lion Storyteller Bible for use with people of all ages. Some recommend the Big Bible Storybook, or for younger children, The Little Bible Storybook series of board books, great for toddlers to handle themselves. The Big Picture Story Bible is excellent, especially for younger children, or for all-age events. The Barnabas Children’s Bible (Junior Age) is also recommended. There is such a wide range of choice of storyteller Bibles that you need to have a read of a number them to find one that suits your setting. Most Bibles contain a selection of the well-known passages.

Record

Make a recording of chosen Bible passages for the children or young people to listen to during the week, and encourage them to bring back their reflections and questions. Most phones or laptops have the facility to record voices and to convert the recording into mp3 files. You don’t have to do this on your own – get the children and young people involved in preparing this. They will most probably be able to advise you on using the technology. Encourage the young people to download the recordings on to their phones or mp3 players.

Use drama

Invite the group to present the story using sound effects and different voices in the reading and recording. It is important to give a little background about the passage as well. Try it with 2 Kings 5.

Ask the group:

Do you ever wonder if you have much influence or power when it comes to important decisions in the adult world?

This passage is about the influence a little servant girl had over one of the most powerful men at the time. Imagine you were living in biblical times and had the lowest position in society: a little servant girl.

How would you cope with being the lowest of the low? Remember during those times women had a very low standing in society, and servants and children were even lower. Despite this, the servant girl proves to be very influential and persuaded a very powerful and important man to look to God.

Look through the passage together and dramatise it or customise the story for recording. You may wish to use the following questions:
What do you think it would have been like to live in this community? What do you think it would feel like to be a servant? What do you think Naaman was like as a person? How do you think Naaman felt when his wife told him what the servant girl had said? Why do you think Elisha stayed inside and sent his servant out? Why do you think the little girl was so happy to help Naaman?

Invite the children and young people to make a note of any questions they might have about the passage.

Scrapbook

Create a simple record book.

You will need: glue; photos; pens; paper; scissors; scrap material and other scrap paper.

Give each child or young person a scrapbook or journal that is theirs to keep: encourage them to bring it each week. They can stick notes and questions about the passages covered in the session and write prayers in it. Stick in a passage for the week for them to reflect on.

Print out a range of passages from the Bible and spread them across the table. Explain to the group they are to look for a verse that either:

• speaks to them;
• they have a lot of questions about;
• tells them something new about biblical times;
• challenges them in their own lives;
• tells a story they recognise;
• talks about community;
• creates an image or picture in their mind.

Encourage the children and young people to work individually.

They can explore these questions in any format they want and use their scrapbooks to work in. Invite them to share their work with others if they wish.

Use your senses

Select a Bible passage and journey through it with all the senses.

Take the group through the story, unpacking it and allowing them to sense it and live it. Beforehand, you will need to think about and pick out what the smells might have been so you have examples ready. Also consider: what might the characters in the story have touched, what might they have tasted, what noises would there be? Be ready with examples.

You might try this with Mathew 14.15-21 (The feeding of the five thousand).

Take the group through the story step by step. 

   "Close your eyes and imagine: You are a child or young person in the crowd. You are sitting on the side of a hill with thousands of people around you. How many people can you see? It’s a hot day, and the air is heavy. Can you feel the sun on your body and feel the ground under your bare feet? What does it feel like? You’re trying to see Jesus but there are so many people. How do you feel in the crowd? What are people saying? Can you smell the air, the grass, the people? Jesus begins to speak. What does he say?"

You might carry on, imagining the different elements of the story and inviting the group to put themselves into the senses of the event.

Or you might use questions to explore the passage:

• Where is Jesus in this passage?
• Where was Jesus before this event?
• Who is Jesus talking to?
• What is Jesus’ message to the crowd? Note his feeling, tone, and attitude.
• What are others saying about Jesus? I wonder how they might feel about him?
• How do people respond to Jesus in this story?
• What are the disciples doing?
• What is the role of the boy?
• What are your impressions of Jesus?
• What is Jesus saying in this passage that is relevant to life today? What is Jesus like?
• How does it feel?

Invite group members to play the role of one of the characters. Read the story and ask them to concentrate on how they think their character feels as the story unfolds. You can stop at key points during the story or wait until the end before asking each character to describe their feelings, e.g. anger, surprise, thankfulness.

If they want to, the group could act out the scene to help them understand how their characters felt.

Use creative arts

Express a story through music (with children)

You will need: a selection of percussion instruments or noise-makers.

Choose a Bible reading that can be retold through sounds. The calming of the storm is an obvious one but also consider some of the Old Testament stories told in many children’s Bibles, e.g. Joseph or Noah.

Tell the story to the children.

Then ask them to think about how the backing track to the story might go: what sounds might be good to go alongside the words? You might want to give some examples from TV programmes.

Distribute your noise-makers or shakers now (and not before!). Talk about the balance of sound needed and explore with the children the variety of sounds they can produce from their instruments.

Work together to plan the different elements of the sound story and then retell it with the accompaniment. The children may be so concerned about their own part of the story they won’t hear the big picture, so you might like to record this on sound or video recordings and then play it back to the group.

Express a story through music (with young people)

You will need: laptops or mp3 players loaded with a variety of music: ask the young people to bring these in.

Select three or four passages from the Psalms for this activity.

Using the Psalms as inspiration, how would the young people tell the story through contemporary music? They can mix together tracks or pick one track that expresses a psalm.

Stop-go!

Create a stop-motion movie with young people.

You will need: a selection of parables; a digital camera; video-editing software; modelling clay to make figures or puppets; a tripod or solid surface to keep the camera steady. (NB You’ll want at least ten photos for each second of film. One of the more important rules of stop-motion animation is that the camera cannot move during shooting.

Stop-motion animation is the process of stringing together a series of still shots to create a movie. It can be done with modelling clay, puppets or anything else you can easily photograph and move around. Don’t be nervous! Stop-motion animation is easy and fun, and you can achieve stunning results.

Ask the group to identify the different scenes in your parable.

The young people need to work either together or in small groups to concentrate on: scenery making; script writing using the parable as the main story; making models of all the characters.

This is a slow process of taking one still picture at a time then moving the character. The sound effects and script are recorded separately as mp3 files on your computer. This is something that could be done in a longer session or as part of a holiday club, etc.

Use themes

You can pull ideas from a range of Bible passages together to work on a theme rather than on the passage. Here’s one example based on the theme of the Holy Spirit blowing through the world. You might make the spiral mobile with your group and then give them the Children’s Sheet, to do either when they’re all together or to take home. Did you know there is a sheet like this to go with every week of material? You can find them on the ROOTS website.

Make a spiral mobile

You will need: A4 card for each person; string; scissors; felt-tip pens: compass or plate to draw a circle.

On the card ask people to draw a large circle and cut it out.

Now they should draw a spiral that starts at the edge of the circle and goes into the centre.

Using scissors, cut and follow the line of the spiral from the edge to the centre. They should now have a coil when pulled out.

Keeping the coil flat, invite the children to decorate both sides, pierce a hole in the top of the coil and tie a length of string to hang the mobile. Weight the bottom with a paper clip, tie it up and watch what the wind can do!

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Year of the Bible 2011 material