This post was written by the INCM Resource Team.
It can be a struggle to get kids in your ministry interested in reading the bible. Even harder to build the desire to do it daily. Getting kids of any age interested in reading is a task that we as leaders should invest time into.
Here are 5 tips to help guide their spiritual growth through reading scripture!
1. Read it yourself!
Modeling Scripture reading is incredibly important as you teach kids!
Read scripture from a physical Bible in front of your kids. Consider incorporating it during the story or as a recap of the story during your discussion time.
Share how you read the Bible in your daily life and help them find easy ways to add it to their daily routines, such as:
- Reading it before bed
- Reading it right when you wake up
- Listening to their parent or caregivers read it in the morning during breakfast
- Listening to it in the car on their way to school
By making it easy for parents and caregivers to incorporate you can help kids make routines around reading and listening to God’s word.
2. Read it like a story.
The Bible IS a story—the greatest story ever told!
Resist the temptation to read quickly or in a monotone voice.
Give the Bible characters voices and use different tempos and volumes don’t be afraid to stop and ask questions along the way, just as you would when reading a children’s book.
This works especially well while reading narratives, like the stories in Exodus and the Gospels.
You can even incorporate picture storybooks of bible stories so kids of every age can connect with the stories.
3. Draw it…
Or sculpt it, or paint it, or build it out of Legos!
After you read the Bible, challenge your kids to visually represent what they just read with art supplies or objects you have in your toy bins.
In his book, Godly Play, Jerome Berryman encourages Bible teachers to help kids play out the stories with objects in order to connect the scripture to a child’s imagination.
You can create toy sets for a story and show them how to use them to tell the story by themselves.
Another option is to let kids draw the story while you’re telling it.
Give them a hard surface and paper and let them choose a crayon, marker, or colored pencil to use.
While you tell the story, invite them to draw it scene by scene.
You will want to draw it out on a whiteboard to illustrate how it can be done.
Encourage them to play out or draw their stories at home with their family.
4. Let them listen.
Sometimes reading feels like work to a kid.
Instead of telling them what to read, try using a Bible app to read it to them or invite them to sit or lay down and simply listen to an adult read it.
Consider creating a cozy listening station in your church where kids can hear different narrators read the scripture for your story this week.
You can invite leaders to read the story in different ways, or from different translations to help kids connect to the story.
One great resource for this is Imaginative Prayer by Jared Patrick Boyd. It helps kids imagine Jesus with them and how they might feel if they were with Jesus in the stories.
5. Bring it to life.
Our tech-savvy kids love to use mobile devices to make videos, and what better subject matter than a Bible story?
Create an activity where they can make a video of the story with a group at church.
The Bible App for Kids is a great place for them to research the story, and have fun while doing it.
Have your leaders film the videos on their phones.
Encourage them as a group to write a rap, craft a stop motion, act it out, or draw on a whiteboard.
Share the videos during a kids’ service or on the same day.
For younger kids, use their toys to act out a story, or play in a sandbox to bring stories into their “original” settings.
Conclusion
We want kids to connect to scripture so they can connect with the living God.
By encouraging kids with fun, different, and interesting ways to read and connect with the Bible, we invite them to enjoy scripture on their own – which will benefit them now and in the future.
