Bible School class

For the mid-terms of my Children and Youth Ministry class, I got each of my students to give a 5 minutes presentation of a bible story as if the class was a children's sunday school class. Children's ministry is often the least thought about and planned part of a church here. Even when new church buildings are put up, rarely are classrooms put in for the kids, and they end up out back sitting in the sun or in some small room. They are given a tiny budget and usually don't have enough benches to sit all the kids (which is usually a lot as familes are generally big here). I have really being stressing the importance of children in the Kingdom and also the importance of being well prepared when teaching them. One of my focuses this term has been on getting creative when teaching children. It is very rare for Children's churches to have even a picture of a story that is being taught let alone some sort of object lesson. Of course it is hard to get Bible curriculum and pictures that are so easy accessible to us in the West. So I was trying to show them to use things around them. A few weeks back I presented the lesson of Jesus feeding the five thousand, and I brought a basket with some bread and fried fish (something everyone has in their house). I also taught The Good Samaritan and brought some bandages, plasters (band-aids) and an empty wine bottle. I was showing them that with a little planning and thought, despite the fact that we have limited resources in Cameroon, one can make Bible stories come alive to children.  I also encouraged them to not always just narrate the story but tell it from a different perspectives of one of the characters in the story. And of course, to teach a lesson, not just a story. They all did amazing well and each one came up with a unique way of presenting the story, I was very happy. We also had a lot of laughs!

Cynthia teaching the story of Abraham and Isaac

Justine teaching on the Good Shepherd. She also brought in a keyboard and we all sang a song of rejoicing at the end. 

Matthias got our attention by doing a puzzle at the start

Emmerencia got her class mates to help her act out Jesus healing the blind man

Sister Agnes taught on Jesus changing the water into wine and brought along yummy juice for all to taste

Mable brought a Picture bible with a drawing of Zacchaeus in it. 

Goodness assuming the role of David

George brought in some of his own helpers!

Goodness was really nervous but did an AMAZING job

And Jacob was very creative as he made a tomb and when he pulled a string,  up popped Lazarus!

Currently there are two children's workers in the class. I am really hope this will encourage many of the students to get involved in their churches, neighborhoods, and schools, to start reaching out to the youth of this nation.