Nagaland Church Leaders Learn How to Teach the Bible to Kids
Most of the Naga people (up to 96%) would call themselves Christian. But many of the Christians and church leaders in Nagaland, India lack a complete understanding of the Bible, theological training, and ministry training. It's our prayer that God would use us to teach, train, and equip the faithful men and women of Nagaland to take the Gospel of Jesus to their own people, especially the next generation.
Teaming Up to Have the Highest Impact
The Children's Ministry Training project connected with Pastor Ato and his wife Seno who lead a project called Evangelism in Nagaland which desires to see people in their Indian state love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. So the two teamed up to provide a few days of training for pastors and church leaders who wanted to come and specifically learn how to teach the Bible to kids.
Pastor Ato has the connections in Nagaland to be able to invite a crowd of people to come and learn and the Children's Ministry Training group has the resources and knowledge to lead the training.
All in a Day's Work
At the training, pastors and church leaders learn how the Bible is one cohesive redemption story, meant to be taught in its entirety, even to kids! They learn how to use interactive methods to appeal to children's wandering attention spans. They get ideas of which games to play and which activities to do. They learn how to make Bible verse memorization fun and easy. They learn how to review lessons from past weeks and how to prepare one for the coming week in a quick and concise way. They learn storytelling skills and get ideas for how to use simple, inexpensive items as props.
The trainees get to participate in their own learning by first pretending they are the kids as they participate in the lessons taught by the leaders. Then they take matters into their own hands getting to do the preparing, teaching, and leading themselves for practice.
The Long-Term Effect of Children's Ministry Training
After the pastors and church leaders in Nagaland finished their conference and went back to their own churches to begin implementing what they learned, some of them shared specific ways they have grown.
The idea of incorporating hands-on learning was a plus point which made the sessions interesting.—V.T.
The way to teach a class, and the steps to take in a sequential manner to teach a class are
something I learned and are very beneficial for me.—K.N.
These days moved me closer to God and polished my poor Bible knowledge in many ways.—R.P.
A Curriculum Gift
Whenever the Children's Ministry Training project conducts a training, it's their desire to gift all the conference attendees with a printed copy of a 99-week children's ministry curriculum, as they did in Nagaland. This curriculum is written for a non-American context and where resources are slim so it's a perfect fit for the places it's distributed.
