Comments on: More on Secondary Bible Curriculum

By: Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:58:59 +0000

Look up curriculum for any core subject in high school and you will find an abundance of options that simply make the Quest series (which my school uses) look like a sub-par (at best) attempt at the meeting the need. Since it is my life’s goal to work in this exact area, I have some additional developed thought to the type of material and sequence that could be offered (and let me simply post here that I think a survey can be done incredibly dynamically in other ways). Perhaps a conference of some sort would be the right place to start… ACSI would be a great place to centralize such an event. Please notify me of anything like this.

By: Lee

Lee — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 02:46:57 +0000

John,
I developed an apologetics curriculum for high school students using portions of Josh McDowell’s material from his book “A Ready Defense”, and tried to supplement our other material to teach hermeneutics. What you describe is essentially the direction I wanted to see our Bible program go. Finding curriculum materials to support that was impossible. The fact of the matter is that there is not a publishing company that produces Christian school curriculum that puts out anything like that. Lifeway is the closest I have seen, but even their material is not particularly academically challenging. And at the moment, their offerings are limited. I think a consortium of Christian school Bible teachers will have to get together and do the writing. We have limited financial resources, and I’m sure that travel is limited by the salary of most Bible teachers, but I think an organizational meeting might just do the trick, and electronic communication could certainly help with a lot of it. Let’s see how many Bible teachers we can get together and see if we can get it done.

I used to give out a Bible passage interpretation assignment dealing with the passage we were studying during the week, and containing the memory passage, with three questions, 1. Restate this passage in your own words. 2. What does this passage mean? 3. How would you personally apply the truths you have discovered in this passage? It was subjective enough that I could pretty much give a completion grade for it, and make notes on it for the benefit of the students. I was told by some parents that it was too hard and too demanding.

By: John Hellriegel

John Hellriegel — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:34:45 +0000

Excellent blog on an important topic. There is no reason why Bible can’t develop tough-minded, tender-hearted teens. I’ve taught middle school Bible for 13 yrs and most of the material that is out there is either Sunday school rehash or scholarly work that lacks application. Our middle school students were woefully unprepared for challenges to their faith in High School That’s why I developed my own apologetics material specifically geared for middle school students(grades 5-9) It is meant to be challenging yet fun. At the same time I introduced the Spiritual Disciplines and the idea of pursuing Christ through prayer, meditation, solitude, submission, simplicity, service, and fasting. It is about training, not trying. We also have weekly Bible Memory verses. However, we start by looking at the context and meaning before application. I developed a middle school hermeneutics program that looks at how to read, study and apply the Bible. We will often apply the spiritual disciplines to the weekly verses. Check it out at Biblelessons4youth.com
I am still looking for excellent curriculum that focuses on the Spiritual formation of students. Any ideas?