Category: Classroom Challenges

I am a great fan of Christian music, especially praise, and worship songs when I can hear the words, sing along with background music, and repeat them several times as I learn the words. However, one challenge I’ve faced in Children’s ministry and in my home church congregation is what I call “New Song Blues.”

I confess that I love the old hymns and many of the older Christian praise and worship songs. I am not opposed to learning some new praise songs but some circumstances make it difficult to learn and to enter into singing during praise and worship in our church service. These same circumstances hinder children when they try to learn new songs that come with Bible curriculum packages.

Some curriculum packages offer a variety of new songs to go along with their teaching materials. This is a great idea because children love music. Having a CD or DVD with prerecorded songs helps the teacher get motivated to teach these songs to his/her class. When children (or adults) sing Christian songs they are reminded of the Biblical lessons they’ve learned along their journey.

“New Song Blues” appear when teachers try to teach the students too many new songs during a single praise and worship service. At times it’s impossible for the students to keep up with the teacher or music CD and the words overload their thinking capacity. As they struggle to learn the words, they forget about focusing on worshiping God. Before they have gone through the first stanza of the song, they have already forgotten the beginning of that stanza. Therefore it is necessary to repeat the same stanza several times so the students can memorize the words. In my opinion, the students should learn one new song at a time until they get it memorized; they another new song can be introduced. This way, the students can learn new songs, yet still, enjoy praising and worshiping God with some of the old familiar tunes.

Sometimes it’s impossible for the students to learn all of the new songs that come with a curriculum package. Therefore, the teacher should choose the songs he/she thinks will be best for his/her class and begin teaching those first. A song that is implanted in a student’s will stick with them for a long time. I believe it’s better to learn a few songs that will be remembered than to overwhelm the class with so many new songs that they can’t even remember after their quarter of lessons is over.

When I worked with children, I generally limited our praise and worship time to between two and four short songs. Among those songs, I tried to limit the new songs to no more than two per praise and worship segment. I generally taught the two new songs repeatedly until many of the students had them memorized. At that point, I would introduce another new song.

Students and adults have a difficult time remembering the lines of a new song and get frustrated trying to fumble through the new song’s words. They get discouraged and focus more on trying to learn the new song than on actually worshiping God. When the students have days or a week between song-learning sessions, they may not even remember the words and/ or melody of the song they previously learned. The challenges with trying to learn new songs can bring about great frustration and new song blues.

As most teachers and other Christian children’s ministry workers know, the challenge of working within specific time allotments can create some challenges. Having too much or two little material to fill class time can send a teacher scrambling for something more for the students to do or trying to figure out how to change the daily agenda to make sure all of the material is covered. This can be stressful.

Most Bible curriculum have a weekly lesson plan which includes a theme, scripture references, a Bible passage or story, discussion questions, and other activities to reinforce the basic lesson. These daily plans are great because they give the teacher a structured plan to help organize the lesson. It’s important for the teacher to make the most out of the time he/she has, and good curriculum helps accomplish this task.

Curriculum that includes a variety of activities allows the teacher the freedom to choose those activities that will work best for his/her class. If the teacher has several choices of activities it may be difficult for him/her to choose between them. However, having extra activities available is a blessing and is much easier to work with than not having enough material to fill the class time.

One solution I found to help with a shortage of class activities was to plan a couple of extra activities as I planned the weekly lesson. Usually this would will my class time but just in case it didn’t, I kept a small assortment of Bible activity books and/or coloring books on hand. These books came in handy on several occasions when the children finished the lesson earlier than expected.

Bible activity books can fill empty time slots but finding one that matches the theme of your lesson–and age of your students–can be a real challenge. This is why its important to prepare your lesson ahead of time. You may have to spend hours searching through activity books or online to find something that will work. For this reason, I would like to see Bible curriculum companies create extra add-on activity books with activities that match the theme of the curriculum package.

Bible activity book publishers could provide lesson outlines and scripture passages to go along with each activity page. This would help homeschooling families that can’t afford expensive Christian textbooks for their children. It would also be a means through which Christian parents with children in public schools could teach their children Bible lessons at home. These activity books could also give stay-at-home parents some creative ideas for activities and lessons they can do at home with their children during the day. This would be a good alternative to our children spending hours in front of computers, game machines, and television sets. It would also, possibly, keep them from burning up all of their time talking on cell phones. It would help eliminate some of the questionable and evil programming that continually bombards their minds with materialism and worldly values.

Just think about how wonderful it would be if children, parents, and even whole families found Jesus Christ through the pages of a fun activity or coloring book. What a great reward!

Most Bible curriculum helps Christian teachers by providing Bible stories and activities for class, which is a great thing. However, I’ve noticed that rarely does a Bible curriculum provide materials to help the students with “hands-on” training for learning how to look up scripture passages and use their Bibles. Nor do the materials help the students become familiar with the order of books in the Bible or learn the differences between the Old and New Testaments. Sure, the students learn Bible stories but can they find the stories in their Bibles? Do they know how to use the table of contents or the concordance in the back of their Bibles?

I understand that children’s classes, from beginners through second grade, may not be able to read the Bible. But older children should be taught how to use their Bibles. Also, they need to know how to use the concordance to look up the location of verses on individual topics. Teaching them this can help them look up problems or topics in God’s word and find good, Godly answers to their questions. Teaching students how to use their Bibles is vital. This will enable them to find Godly answers to their questions and Biblical solutions to many of their challenges as they continue walking with God and facing their giants on their journey through this life.

There are many Christian books, on a multitude of topics, in the market today. But how many of the billions of books available teach their readers how to use their Bibles?

As God ministered to me about teaching and writing, I asked Him to show me the age span where children began to leave the “milk” of God’s word and begin eating the solid food and/or meat of God’s word. I believed God wanted me to write Bible curriculum for children. Therefore, I wanted to know the age when children should leave the simple Old Testament Stories behind and move forward to learning about Jesus, the Holy Bible, and other topics related to living Godly lives.

This particular year I was teaching a class of students in fourth through sixth grade. It seemed that several of the fourth graders were having a difficult time adjusting to the change from “milk to meat”, from all fun and games to learning how to use their Bibles, learning the meat of God’s word, and being serious and reverent towards God, His people in authority, and His kingdom.

I believe this adjustment needs to take place by third grade, or at the latest fourth grade because, in only a few years down the road, the children in our classes will be approached by the world and tempted with opportunities to get mixed up in alcohol, drugs, illicit sexual relationships, and a wide range of destructive, sinful behavior and devices. Our children need to know these things can bring destruction to their lives.

As our children grow and mature in Christ, they need to be taught how to look up verses in scripture, how God’s spiritual armor works, how to participate in spiritual warfare, and how to make good choices. Without this training, our children will not be prepared to make the choices or fight the spiritual battles that come their way.

I know God watches out for His people and He takes care of them. Yet God does admonish us to “train them up in the ways of the Lord.” Deuteronomy 6:5-9 tells us, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shall teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when though risest up. And thou shall bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”

God entrusts His children with us. He expects us to care for them and to feed them, and teach them how to do these things for themselves. How can our children grow up equipped with the tools and strength needed from God’s word if we don’t teach them? How will they be able to make good choices? How will they be able to confront and deal with the battles of everyday life if we don’t take God’s word seriously and take time to teach them?

As Christian workers try to teach God’s word in classes, we face a variety of challenges. Satan will do whatever he can to distract us or our students by creating chaos or confusion. He will also work to cause offenses in our class relationships and with our students’ parents, coworkers, and any others who may be involved. Some challenges come from the sinful nature of people and some from other sources. We must be on guard to make sure we keep our classes focused on the Lord, on the lessons we teach, and headed down the right path.
With God’s help, me can overcome some of these challenges, but for most of them, we have to pray and leave the problem in God’s hands. We cannot do anything to change people but God can do all things, and He can solve the problems.
As I share the testimonials with the classroom challenges I faced, see if you can discern which ones can possibly be resolved by the teacher and those that cannot. Also, see what you can glean to help you manage your classes.

You can find these challenges listed as Testimonies Tips and Tidbits Classroom Challenges …