Picturing Faith—Making the Bible Challenge Work for Children and Youth
The parish I serve is currently in the midst of the year-long Bible Challenge, that many Episcopal Churches have taken up and that the Rev. Marek Zabriske has codified. How to support adults in this challenge is an easy enterprise, but how to support children is another story altogether. The prospect of having children read the Bible daily is just not practical. Those who have completed the Bible Challenge or read through large sections of the Bible know, that there are MANY stories that contain adult-only material and would certainly be rated R if they were movies, which is children’s story bibles generally only contain 50 to 75 stories. To solve this problem, my parish has created three resources for families to enable children and youth. The first is a devotional guide for families, The Bible Challenge for Families, which invites families to a weekly encounter with a bible story from Desmond Tutu’s Children of God Storybook Bible, the Spark Story Bible or the Brick Bible. Each week families are invited to read the story, use the meditation questions to reflect on its meaning and engage the activities. You can download a copy of the first half of the year here. The second resource we’ve created is a monthly inter-generational Christian formation night, called “The Bible & ….”, where we explore culture aspects of our lives that bring the Bible to life, such as the Bible & Film, the Bible & Food, the Bible & Music, etc. After a dinner and brief whole group time, the children and adults separate for different programs. Borrowing the characters and plot line from The Magic School Bus, Corrine Fredrickson, our Minister for Children/Youth (aka Ms. Frizzle), invites the children to actually enter into one of the Bible as they journey on the Magic School Bus. At our first meeting, “The Bible & Film” several weeks ago, we unveiled the third and final resource to bring the Bible to life for our young people, the Performing Parables film-making series, as we screened our first film. You can watch the video, Blind Bartimaeus, here. The idea behind making films with young people is simple. Kids love to act, produce and make films. If you’ve ever given a child a smart phone, you’ve noticed how quickly they discover the video app. With this more intentional film-making approach, we have given the kids an opportunity to engage the sacred stories in their terms, with their own words. The films we make allow God to be known to them and to us—as we watch the films later. By acting out these stories from the Bible, the stories enter into the very bodies of the children. They know the stories in a new way. If you’d like to use any of these resources, please feel free. If you would like to know more about their creation and how you might adapt them, you are welcome to send me an email at [email protected] or give me a call at 716.483.6405. 
The Reverend Luke Fodor is Forma Board member, the Rector of St. Luke’s Church in Jamestown, New York, and the father of two boys (Aidan, 7 and Kieran, 5) who read from the from the Brick Bible, the Spark Story Bible or Desmond Tutu’s Children of God Storybook Bible nearly every day.