Teaching Like Jesus Taught

The past several weeks our Sermons4Kids lessons have focused on the parables of Jesus. When Jesus wanted to teach people a lesson, his lesson quite often begins with, "The kingdom of heaven is like ______".  You can fill in the blank! Matthew 13:34 says, "Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable." Later in that chapter, after telling several parables, Jesus asked his listeners, "Have you understood all these things?"

"Yes," they replied. And that is why Jesus taught using parables!

When I first began teaching children, I spent most of my preparation time looking at the things around me. When something caught my eye, I would ask myself, "How could I use that to teach the children something about Jesus?" Almost all of my lessons began by showing the children an object and asking things such as what is it, how does it work, and what can it do for us? Then I would segue into the Bible lesson by saying something like, "That reminds me of something that happened in our Bible lesson today."

Jesus taught in parables, object lessons, and stories so that people would understand what he was trying to teach them.  Wouldn't it be a good idea for us to teach the same way? I have seen many teachers lose the children because they didn't engage their imagination in that first few minutes of the lesson. The right object will get you off on the right foot to learning about Jesus.

If that's not the way you're teaching, try it!