One very cold and foggy Saturday morning, a few weeks ago, we were on our way to visit my husband, Kyle’s grandparents for the day. This is a visit we try to make once every three months. We would love to see them more often, however, the drive takes us two hours each way. This long and tedious drive is not a complete waste of time. Kyle and I usually spend it solving all the world’s problems. Ha ha ha. No, seriously. It has become a great time when we talk about our future plans as a family and as individuals. This particular Saturday was no different. We got talking about my blog and potential topic ideas. I can’t remember if it was Kyle’s idea or mine, but through our discussion we came up with the idea of doing book reviews. Now, I think the only time I have written a book review was when it was required at school or at college. I will be the first to admit that it was not my favourite task to do. This time is different though, I am looking forward to sharing some books with you that I have found helpful in ministry and in life in general.
In this blog post I am going to review Stephanie Carmichael’s book, “Their God is so Big”. You may have noticed that I have referenced Stephanie Carmichael’s book in some of my previous blogs. This is definitely a book that I have read and reread many times over the years.
This book is specifically aimed at Sunday School (or Children’s Church) leaders, and coordinators, who are teaching young children between the ages 2 – 7 years old. It can, however, still be a very valuable book to those leaders who are teaching older children as well. It is helpful to consider these early years and how children develop the concept of God.
The book has been divided into two sections. The first section outlines some basic skills that are helpful to know when teaching a Sunday school class. Chapter 1 begins by outlining the characteristics of a Sunday School teacher. Stephanie takes great care to emphasise the great responsibility that we, as teachers, have in sharing God’s Word with children. The next topic is about understanding the children themselves. We are given very clear and concise descriptions of the developmental stages for each of the various age groups. Knowing this information will give you guidelines as to what you can expect the children in your class to be like. Then the book moves on to teaching the Bible to children. First she gives some general principles on how to be an effective teacher. (This is where I got some of my concepts for my blog on how to be an effective teacher. ) Now that we have a basic understanding of what children are like, developmentally, we are then given a very helpful explanation of what the children are able to learn about God, according to their specific age group, and how best to teach them. The next few chapters go into the specifics of how to actually prepare a Sunday School lesson and delivering it. First you are shown the importance of understanding the Bible passage for yourself before you are able to teach it. Subsequently, you are shown some practical tools on how to present your lesson to the children in your class, including some great visual aids ideas. Following that is about designing the overall package, including crafts, memory verse and prayer time. The last chapter in this section is called Keeping Control. This is all about discipline in the classroom. (I drew a lot from this chapter when I wrote my blog on Discipline.)
The second section gives some information on the other aspects of running a Sunday School program and some resources for a Sunday School coordinator. There are tips on how to make the most of your location and what to do when the children first arrive. There is also a chapter about the Big Group time and what you should do with the children before you break up into your smaller classes. There are some practical points on safety. Chapter 13 is very well thought out and is specifically designed for the Sunday School coordinator to use to train current and future Sunday School teachers. It basically packages everything that was taught in chapters 1 -7 into an easy-to-use 6 weeks (Chapters 2 & 3 are merged into one) training course for teachers.
I found this book easy to read and understand. I felt that the book had a very natural and logical flow to it, where one chapter seemed to lead seamlessly into the next. Another great quality of the book is that, although all the chapters flow beautifully into each other, you are still able to read one chapter on its own and know exactly what she is talking about. This is very useful if you are just wanting to read one particular section again, if it is something that you are struggling with or would just like to brush up on. Throughout the book there are also various exercises. These are called “think and pray” or “challenges and change” or “change and do” or something similar. These exercises are very constructive, as they get you thinking more practically about a specific topic. There are many extremely worthwhile creative ideas that are suggested in the book. Unfortunately, because the book is over 20 years old, it is lacking any contemporary ways of being creative. I also really liked the fact that Stephanie uses some Scripture verses in her book. You can see that she is not only speaking from her own experiences, but also seeing what God’s word has to say. I, personally, however, would have liked more Scripture references in some of the chapters so that I could go deeper. Again, although this book is over 20 years old it is still extremely helpful. It is still most definitely worth the read because there are many fundamental truths about teaching Sunday School that will never change.
I would recommend this book to those who have only just started teaching Sunday School or to those who have been teaching Sunday School for many years. It is a great resource to have to help point you in the right direction when you are first getting started or to build on the knowledge you already have. As I mentioned earlier, this book is, however, also a great tool for Sunday School coordinators, particularly in terms of training up future teachers.
Thanks for reading my post. I hope you found it helpful. Please send me any feedback, comments or questions that you may have. I would also like to hear if there are any topics that you would like me to deal with in the future. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Bye for now.
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen” (Galatians 6:18)
