Your club may be filled with kids who’ve been in church all their lives and are very familiar with the commonly-taught Bible stories. How do you get kids who’ve “heard it all” to dig deeper? How can you help them make new discoveries about God and apply God’s Word to their everyday life.

  • Use Study Aids – If your kids are old enough, teach them how to use a concordance, cross-reference listings, Bible dictionaries, and so on. Or use these things yourself to help the kids dig deeper into the Bible passage.
    • Find related verses or new facts about the passage. Ask children how these add to their understanding of the passage.
    • Do a word study, reading lots of verses that contain a key word you’re learning about, such as patience.
    • Discover the historical or cultural context of a Bible story.
    • Look at a map to see where an event took place.
  • Emphasize Application – Help your kids understand that they are responsible to do something with their Bible knowledge. There’s more to it than knowing the stories and giving the “right” answers. Ask application questions:
    • When could this story/verse help you this week with . . . your bothers and sisters/kids at school/teachers/and so on?
    • What’s something new about this story that you’ve never thought of before?
    • How will it make a difference for you?
  • Have a Group Sharing Time – This could happen weekly, monthly, or as the children seem ready. Ask your group to tell how they applied the Bible truths learned in the last meeting. Have them talk together and encourage each other about how they could apply this week’s truths. They could pray for each other too. This kind of life application (and perhaps accountability) will help kids focus on their relationship with God rather than on how many Bible facts or stories they know.
  • Give Children Turns to Help Lead a Bible Lesson – What you ask them to do will depend on their ages, but having a hand in preparing or teaching will give them a new view of a story or passage.
    • Tell a child ahead of time what the story will be about, and ask him or her to decide on props or visual aids and bring them to the class. An added benefit is that the kids can get their parents involved in helping them with this task.
    • Recruit a couple of best friends to work together ahead of time to create a song or poster to go with the lesson. Then present it during the lesson.
    • Help little ones hold up visual aids as you tell the story.
    • When the lesson plans call for finding a helper for a skit or other presentation, practice it with a child.