Resource Review: The Biggest Story - Student Workbook
That’s exactly what Crossway has built with the Student Workbook for their The Biggest Story curriculum that launched this summer. It’s got all the things you love from The Biggest Story as a kids minister or parent (and there’s LOTS to love!), but it’s been designed from the beginning with families in mind. This single volume is your one-stop shop for helping your elementary-aged kids dive into more than 100 Bible stories (enough to cover two years if you hit one lesson each week!). Let’s jump in, and see what they’ve put together.
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DOUBLE Book Review: It's Good to Be a Boy/Girl
Thankfully, our friends at The Good Book For Children have a great pair of books to remind kids (and parents) that we can celebrate all that God made boys and girls to be. Champ Thornton tackled It’s Good to Be a Boy, and Jen and Zoe Oshman (a mother-daughter team up!) put together It’s Good to Be a Girl. Both books are beautifully illustrated by Hsulynn Pang. While each book dives into a particular gender, they’re laid out similarly and have their own catchy rhyme that’s repeated through the text for readers to latch on to.
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Book Review: The Dreamer (To the Ends)
The Dreamer is the debut release from our friend Jenny Marcelene. It’s the first in a series of books she’s working on to help kids cultivate a biblical worldview and spark an interest in how they can pray for the nations. I’ve been sitting on this book for months, mostly because I wanted to read it with my boys who are 9 and 11 (right in the target demo for this book!) and get their feedback as we went.
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From Ordinary to Extraordinary
Your child truly can do all things through God who gives them strength. God has amazing plans for your son or daughter. So encourage them to seek him in faith, love, and obedience. Remind them that their feelings of frailty or insignificance are okay because that’s the ground level where God starts building.
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Talk Later? The Battle For Sunday Conversations
As soon as my son became mobile, I became increasingly aware of the difficulty of connecting with people on Sundays. Unless someone is willing to walk with me through the halls as we chase the child like shadows, most conversations are cut off mid-sentence. While many are quick to laugh it off, it’s difficult to ignore the low-level frustration that settles in as I attempt to placate the interrupted interaction with the often empty promise: “We’ll talk more next week!”
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My Manhood Manifesto
Yet we recognize both lanes are headed in the same direction—godly Christian maturity. That direction aims to reach a destination: each Christian boy should aim to be a godly man one day, and each Christian woman to be a godly woman one day. The right direction leads to the right destination.
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Teaching Children Prayers That Transform Hearts
Yet we know the sacred responsibility we have as Christian parents to teach our children to pray from the heart. We know that however simple a prayer may be, it must be sincere. And we know that the Bible—especially the Lord's Prayer—instructs us richly in how to approach God. So if you sometimes find yourself, as I do, settling into superficial prayer with your kids, I want to encourage you with a simple method that has helped my family pray with more biblical balance and sincerity.
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We Got to Church Early
Needless to say, Sunday morning is a marathon. That’s true when I roll in right on time, let alone early enough to bear the burdens of other believers, mingle with members, and greet new guests. But again, I got to church early, so we might as well make the most of it. What I give up is an extra twenty minutes on the sunrise side of Sunday morning, and what I gain is a glimpse of earth as it is in Heaven.
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Finding the Gospel in My Christmas Card Chaos
Then I paused: Wait — that’s the gospel. That’s why Jesus came! The entire meaning of Christmas is bound up in this beautiful truth: We were so deeply stained by sin that we could do nothing to save ourselves, nothing to remove the wickedness within. We needed to be completely remade. We needed a Savior to come into the world and pay the penalty we could not pay.
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