To the Ends of the Earth: Sunday School

I have mentioned before that we teach the middle school class at church on Sundays. When we started going to our church in August, one of the first orders of business was to get involved by serving in some capacity. After meeting with our pastor about some of the needs in the church, we followed God's leading and decided to start a new Sunday School class for some of the older kids in the church. It has proved to be one of the greatest blessings and challenges all in one.

We have enjoyed seeing these kids grow in their knowledge of who Jesus is and we have witnessed the growth in their relationships with Christ. We love it when they bring back their Bible reading logs completed and their Bible memory work memorized. Though sometimes these occurrences seem rare, it makes them so much sweeter when they do happen. We are encouraged to have such wonderful support from our church leadership, the parents and the students as well. The younger kids peek their heads into our classroom and tell us how much they can't wait to be old enough to be in the big kids' class! How fun!

One of the challenges of teaching this class has been curriculum development. We were handed a blank slate and we ran with it. We started off the class teaching basic Christian doctrine and theology. We covered a ton of stuff: sin, man, the Trinity, the Church, and the list goes on. The next series we did was called "You ask, we answer." The kids wrote down any and all questions they wanted to discuss in class and we picked one each week and covered it from a Biblical perspective. These questions ranged from, "What do I do when I feel negative emotions?" to "What does it mean to be born again?" We enjoyed getting to talk about things that were of personal interest to our class. Currently, we are in the middle of a series on the Fruit of the Spirit!

Before we began this series, we spent one class period playing "Jeopardy Review" of all the topics we had covered to date. The kids loved it and it was so cool to see how much they had learned.

When you have a room full of middle school girls and one boy, you're bound to have some of this going on. We try to keep it at a minimum.

One of the girls "buzzing in" to answer the question.

Topics included: "Who is God?", "Jesus Christ/Holy Spirit", "All About the Bible", "What do I do with negative emotions?" and "The REAL Christmas Story".

One of our goals with our class was to build real relationships with them that went beyond our hour and a half on Sunday mornings. A while back, we decided that a good way to do that would be to invite them into our home for games and pizza. Last Friday night, we did just that! We were surprised when we had ALL girls and half of them were brought as visitors! Praise God!

These kids can EAT!

There was lots of shrieking and high-pitched noises coming from this group all evening. I forgot how high middle school girl voices are :)

After dinner, we gathered around our coffee table to play a class favorite: Apples to Apples.

Middle school humor: "Friendly" - mice, road kill, angry hornets and barfing.

Guess which one won?

At some point, someone stole my camera and I found lots of these kids of pictures later.

My sweet husband did a fantastic job keeping up with all the girls in our home.

I am so thankful for him.

This particular round was funny because me and one of the girls put down "sunrise" and "sunset". We couldn't remember which card was whose! But, since it was a middle schooler choosing, clearly "Spam" won.