As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids. This is number 73 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.
I remember well at the age of 15, becoming the teacher for the five-year-olds at the Adamsville church of Christ. I loved getting to teach and felt honored that the elders thought I could “handle that.” Of course the prequel to that was being the daughter of two people who were both actively teaching in the program and being called on to prepare materials and to be a part of many a cookout in our big yard for those who had achieved the attendance and memory work for their fifth grade year. My mom taught that grade and, every quarter, she planned a day at our house for the students who were diligent throughout the quarter. (I was amazed at her funeral, how many came to me to tell me they still remembered her classes as the best of their lives, …”and she rewarded us with hot dogs at your house! That was soooo fun!”)
Growing up in a “culture” of teaching was hugely influential to the classes I was able to teach through the years, and to our family Bible times as our own kids were growing up. I taught those five-year-olds until I left for college and it was a natural thing to sign up for teaching the four-year-olds with Miss Lora Laycook at the Henderson church when I went to Freed Hardeman University. From her, I learned invaluable tips and I honed skills. It was truly a joy to go in the basement of that old building Sunday after Sunday and watch a master teacher. I still sing songs with my grandchildren that I learned in that little room. Miss Lora spent hours on hours each week making little clothespin dolls and cutting little robes out for their robes, making boxes for the kids to peek in as she told the story and making up songs that told the stories, musically. She was truly incredible, by the standards of college girls who had the privilege of observing and helping. Every semester there were two or three that had the blessing in that little concrete room in the basement. There was a never any curriculum bought…only a creative 80-year-old gentle woman with a meek spirit.
So for today and for “practical” get your pre-teens involved in helping you prepare for your Bible classes. If you aren’t teaching, get busy. I hear a lot of “…we just can’t find teachers.” Shame on the women in the kingdom when this is the case. We should be doing better; not just for our congregations, but specifically for our own children. It’s hard for us to show our own children the value of souls if we are too complacent to put any time into the most teachable, reachable souls in our own circles.
If you haven’t been teaching,, go to your leaders and ask them to put you on the list. If you need to be in the classroom with a pro first, ask for that privilege. But whatever you do, stop showing your own kids the relative unimportance of little souls. Show the reality: Each child in the Bible school classroom has a soul that’s more important than all the money in all the pockets of all the millionaires of all the world, and, as for me and my household, we are determined to try to put Jesus in each one of those souls. Then get your own kids cutting and pasting and being part of the primary evangelism.
You can do this. NOT doing it may be one of the most damning concessions you make in the area of service and evangelism to the little people in your house.
