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Saturday 7 January 2023

Teaching the Bible to university students

This month, we return to the Bible with the book of Amos. I for one, am rather ignorant of Amos, so this opportunity is welcome.

Here's a lovely story about one Sunday school teacher's experience of teaching the Bible. It’s recorded in the September 22, 1945 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel, under the title of Teaching the Bible in the Sunday School where Edyth S. Armstrong writes -

Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, was truly cognizant of the vital contribution of the Bible to successful living...

It is therefore important that opportunity be given for Sunday school students to know the Bible better...

Some superintendents have found it very helpful to set aside twenty to thirty minutes at every monthly teachers' meeting for the presentation of Bible backgrounds by a member chosen in advance... The teachers thus become well grounded in Scriptural backgrounds and are better prepared to answer the many questions of their pupils...

...One teacher told of a group of college men who, after she had appeared the second Sunday as their teacher, asked her if she was to be their new teacher. When she replied in the affirmative, their next question was, "Are you going to be regular?" This time she answered affirmatively and with a fervent prayer of consecration that she might fulfill her promise. Almost immediately she was asked, "Will you teach us something of the Bible?"

As they explained this request, they told her that they were college students, but that in all their years in Sunday school they had never learned enough about the Bible as a book to speak intelligently on the subject or to defend it should it be attacked in class. "If you will give us ten minutes on the Bible every Sunday we will come to your class. Otherwise we are not interested." they finished. Naturally the teacher responded to their request!...

...a simple introduction, varied for different books, will do much to make Jeremiah. Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea real people to the students in Sunday school.

How good to be learning about the Bible as a book of books and thus equipping ourselves for teaching a new generation.

Julie Swannell


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