How God speaks through the Bible stories – a presentation

On your marks

An introduction to the idea of the Bible as the place to find story answers (and more questions!) to life’s big questions.

With possible links to:

• Bible Sunday
• or looking at some special stories in the Bible
• or a series of what the Bible means to people today.

Get set

You will need:

• several copies of Yellow pages or local directories.
• a set of cards that outline something that has happened or a particular need, which requires professional help. e.g. car breakdown, burst water pipe, building extensions or garden furniture etc
• 3 story cards (see below)

Go

1.Introduce the group to Yellow Pages or local reference directories. Explain how they are used and then get the children in groups to find people or places who can help with the various problems that you will read out from that set of cards you have prepared.

2. Talk about how they would then get the help they needed and what might happen. For example, visits by more than one person to see what needs to be done; estimates; phone calls, plans, etc. The full story of the situation will need to be told.

3. The last card has a different sort of problem:
You’re facing a problem at school and you’re not sure what is the right thing to do and who can help?
Christians believe that God is interested in all that happens to us and that he can bring help. The Bible is God’s Yellow Pages – talking pages – and Christians believe that God talks in stories.

4. Divide the group into three teams to work out a mime. Each group has a different outline of a particular and important Bible story. These are:

A – Abraham – he is called away from his home, crosses the desert arrives in a new place to live, builds stone altars wherever he prays and is thankful to God.

B – Moses – he leads the people away from slavery in Egypt, across the Red Sea to safety, to begin a long journey through the wilderness to a promised land.

C – Jesus – visiting Jericho spots a local man up a tree. He was hiding there to see Jesus because everyone hates him. Jesus invites the man down and goes to his house for a meal. After the meal, the man is so pleased that Jesus has befriended him, that he gives back money that he has stolen from others.

Each group mimes the story to the others. Can they work out what the story is about?

5. God speaks his answers through stories of people’s lives, which are recorded in the collection Christians call the Bible. What do you think God was saying in the talking pages of these three stories?

You could follow up this by discovering other stories that they might know from the Bible.

Continue to talk together using the following prompts:

• I wonder why God chose stories as the way to talk to us?
• I wonder which stories mean most to you?
• I wonder if God is still telling stories?
• I wonder whether God could be telling a story using my life?