Telling God’s Story, Year Two: The Kingdom of Heaven

Introduction

Unit 1: Stories Jesus Told
Lesson 1: Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk (Matthew 21:28–32)
Lesson 2: The Kingdom of God Grows on its Own No Matter What (Mark 4:26–29) Lesson 3: Everyone is Your Neighbor (Luke 10:30–37)
Lesson 4: Don’t Stop Forgiving Others (Matthew 18:21–35)
Lesson 5: God is Equally Gracious to All (Matthew 20:1–16)

Unit 2: Miracles Jesus Did
Lesson 6: Kings Don’t Pay Taxes (Matthew 17:24–27)
Lesson 7: Taking Jesus at His Word (John 4:46–54)
Lesson 8: King Jesus Has Mercy on the Helpless (Luke 18:35–43)
Lesson 9: The Faith of the Outsiders (Luke 17:11–19)
Lesson 10: Jesus Actually Touches a Dead Girl and a Sick Woman (Matthew 9:18–26)

Unit 3: Teachings of Jesus
Lesson 11: God Loves the Rich and the Poor the Same (Luke 14:7–14)
Lesson 12: No One’s Sins are too Big for God to Forgive (Luke 7:36–50)
Lesson 13: Jesus is the Shepherd who Loves His Sheep (John 10:11–21)
Lesson 14: Jesus is Greater than Death (John 11:17–27)
Lesson 15: Staying Connected to Jesus (John 15:1–8)

Unit 4: The Sermon on the Mount
Lesson 16: Give to the Needy without Showing Off (Matthew 6:1–4)
Lesson 17: You Cannot Serve God and Another (Matthew 6:19–24)
Lesson 18: Be Honest With Yourself Before You Judge Others (Matthew 7:1–5)
Lesson 19: Living a Disciplined Life (Matthew 7:13–14)
Lesson 20: Bad Trees Always Bear Bad Fruit (Matthew 7:15–23)

Unit 5: Jesus’ Early Life
Lesson 21: God Is On the Move . . . Again (Luke 1:5–25)
Lesson 22: The Coming of the King (Luke 1:26–38)
Lesson 23: God Exalts the Humble (Luke 1:39–56)
Lesson 24: God is about to Rescue Israel (Luke 1:57–80)

Unit 6: Jesus’ Disciples
Lesson 25: Jesus is the Son of God (Matthew 16:13–20)
Lesson 26: No One Has a Higher Rank in God’s Kingdom (Matthew 18:1–4)
Lesson 27: Jesus Leaves No One Out (Mark 9:38–41)
Lesson 28: Jesus’ Followers Are Servants, not Commanders (Mark 10:35–45)

Unit 7: Opposition to Jesus
Lesson 29: Jesus Upsets a Synagogue Service (Luke 4:14–30)
Lesson 30: False Teaching Spreads like Yeast (Matthew 16:5–12)
Lesson 31: A Clean Heart is Better than Clean Food (Matthew 15:1–20)
Lesson 32: Surrendering our Lives to God Every Day (Matthew 16:21–26)

Unit 8: The End of Jesus’ Life
Lesson 33: Obey God More than Caesar (Matthew 22:15–22)
Lesson 34: Jesus Introduces a New Exodus (Matthew 26:17–28)
Lesson 35: Jesus Suffers and Prays Alone (Matthew 26:36–46)
Lesson 36: Jesus Doesn’t Fight Back When Arrested (Matthew 26:47–56)

Supplemental Lessons: The Rest of the Story
Supplemental Lesson 1: A Politician Condemns an Innocent Man (John 19:1–16)
Supplemental Lesson 2: The Death of Jesus Fulfills Scripture (John 19:28–37)
Supplemental Lesson 3: Mary Magdalene Spreads the News that Jesus is Alive (John 20:10–18)

Telling God’s Story, Year 2 Instructor Text is at the printer, being prepped for printing. We saw the proofs last Friday and they look wonderful!
The Activity Book for Telling God’s Story, Year 2 is at the typesetter. After that, it’ll have one more quality-check and then it, too, will go to the printer.

We are planning to offer PDF versions of both these books for sale, on our webstore, sometime in the first half of March (we’ll announce the exact date on Facebook and on this blog). When we put those up, we’ll also post free samples of the first few lessons to our site.
The print versions should be available from our store sometime in late March (and at Amazon by April).

Thank you for your patience during this long production process.

In Mark 4:26-28, Jesus describes the growth of God’s kingdom like this: “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.”

This passage, which inspired the cover to Telling God’s Story, Year 2, just became real to us in a new way.

• The instructor text for Telling God’s Story, Year Two: The Kingdom of Heaven has made it through the first stage of proofreading. (That means we’re about to receive a manuscript covered in red pencil marks and notations like “There is no “z” in “Caesar”). Next, it will be going through another level of proofreading and fact-checking.
• The student activity book for Telling God’s Story, Year Two: The Kingdom of Heaven is almost ready to go to the typesetter. We’re excited about this one, too: historical recipes and craft projects; new mazes, maps, word-searches, and crossword puzzles; 39 new coloring pages; service projects (or “Put it Into Practice,” as we call them); rambunctious games for large and small groups; Scripture memorization, and more.
• We expect to have PDF versions of these books for sale on our webstore by December, with print versions available by February. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to see more updates.
• Have you seen the cover yet? It’s by one of our artists, Jeff West, who was inspired by Jesus’ parable of the kingdom in Mark 4:26-29:

They praised the overview text and the yearly instructor and student books as being “accessible, clearly written, and easy to follow.” And they were on board with our approach of introducing theological concepts in age-appropriate ways.

Their reviewers (including a homeschool co-op teacher) also said, “If your goal is to provide your children with a full, vibrant and cohesive understanding of God’s story and of God’s desire to reconcile all things, Telling God’s Story provides a good starting point.”

So far the review is only available in their print edition, but if they post it online we will certainly be linking to it.

 Tell us a bit about your children, please. How many do you have, what ages are they, and what is something unique about each one?

Felicia (nickname Yaya) is 9 and is my “mini-me” in personality. She is a real take-charge girl, always planning something, works quickly, sets goals, a real mover. Noah (nickname Bee) is 6 and is a dawdler, a goof, a math whiz and highly emotional. Elliotte (nickname Bit-Bit) is 3 and is keeping her true personality a secret or perhaps she just hasn’t decided yet. Generally she is an easy-going kid who throws us a few curveballs every once in awhile.

What sorts of challenges have you and your husband faced in teaching your children about God, answering tough questions about God/Jesus/matters of life and death, etc?  

I feel that our move from a Protestant church to Eastern Orthodoxy has made our job of teaching our children about God easier. This is because our faith allows for much more mystery and “unknowns” in God and in faith than our previous experience allowed for. It helps take the pressure of “we have to have it all figured out” off of us as parents. Though my 5 year old son did once declare “We’re not Christian, we’re Orthodox!” which made for a difficult explanation! The Story of the World, Volume Two has actually really helped my children understand the branches of Christianity better, and where we fit among them.

Besides “Telling God’s Story,” what other books or projects have you contributed to?

I have had several articles published in my original field (human lactation) and I currently am a professional speaker in that field. Homeschooling: Because of my Story of the World lapbook development I have been afforded the opportunity to be a presenter on lapbooking at homeschooling conferences.

What’s your workspace? Do you work at home, or at outside locations, or at an office, or all of the above? What tools/computers do you use?

This is a “laugh out loud” question for me. We are currently pursuing a home on my parent’s land for a shared homesteading venture and that has been a three year process that is not yet complete, which means we have moved 4 times in those 3 years. Currently we are in an unwinterized large one-room cabin as a family of 5. I work at home when my husband gets the kids out of the house. I have been known to borrow friend’s houses when they are not at home. I sometimes go to my husband’s office “after hours” and work there. Starbucks knows me well, as does the downtown cafe and library. I have been forced to be rather nomadic in my work spaces.

With regards to tools and computer: I work from a hard copy for brainstorming and then get it all down in Word on my laptop. I have learned to keep my camera and USB cable with me at all times in order to demonstrate ideas more clearly.

Can you give us a preview of a project you’re working on for Year Two? Something that you’re especially excited about?

I am excited about the Ten Lepers rhyme I came up with (Luke 17:11-19), which my very talented mother selflessly edited for me because I can rhyme, but I seriously lack talent in meter!

Thanks to Alia, for sharing her expertise with us.

To find out more about our books, visit olivebranchbooks.net.

One recent “review” (really, more a collection of scare-quotes) posted on Facebook uses the following quote to condemn our curriculum.

 “The Flood was an attempt by God to set it right, but it didn’t work.” (Page 70)

This quote, from Page 70 of Telling God’s Story: A Parents’ Guide to Teaching the Bible, has not only been taken out of context, but a footnote following the sentence has been eliminated.  The footnote explains that this is not a mature theological understanding of the Flood.  It is the understanding that one might have, if one only had read the Genesis Flood story, and not the rest of Scripture. But the goal of the curriculum is to bring students into a full knowledge of the whole of Scripture.

Here is the text of the footnote to that sentence, found on the same page (70):

One important side note. I know that referring to God as “attempting” some­thing that “doesn’t work” doesn’t sound all that good, but that is how God is presented in this stage of the biblical story. Not every bit of mature theology is downloaded onto the opening chapters of Genesis, and it is very important that we allow the biblical story to be told the way God wants to tell it. There is a purpose to all this. The Bible is heading in a certain direction, and we need to allow the story to unfold as it does.

As always, if you have questions about the book, we encourage you to read it for yourself. Free samples of all the books in the curriculum can be read at the Olive Branch Books site.

In our previous post we discussed a quotation from Telling God’s Story: A Parents’ Guide to Teaching the Bible  that had been taken out of context to misrepresent the book. Here we’ll briefly clear up another. Dr. Enns has been accused of criticizing the Bible and its Author because of his use of a “messy room” metaphor in the introduction to the book.

Here is the quote which has been circulated and mis-explained:

“For many parents, the Bible looks a little bit like my child’s room. It’s a mess. Names, places, events are all over the place, and you hardly know where to start cleaning up. It’s such a mess, in fact, that if someone ripped twenty pages out of Leviticus or 1 Chronicles, you might not even notice it was missing. And if your aim is to teach the Bible to your children, the mess isn’t just confusing. It’s stressful.”

(TGS, page 10)

 Dr. Enns does not say that he believes the Bible is a mess. As the first sentence of that excerpt implies, he is saying that the Bible can seem overwhelming, disorganized, or cluttered to parents who are trying to teach it systematically to their children. He goes on to give the example of someone trying to read and teach straight through the Bible, with a young child. Genesis and the first part of Exodus go all right, but things get trickier in the long “legal” sections and genealogies. If we expect the Bible to be organized like a textbook, we’ll be overwhelmed by its mix of genres and its refusal to behave neatly.

But by saying that it can appear messy to an overwhelmed parent, Dr. Enns is not denigrating the Bible. Our curriculum’s entire purpose is to help parents better understand the Bible and see how it fits together (so that it becomes “a welcome place”—page 12). This allows them to teach it to their children with the goal of introducing them to its Author and Main Character. As Dr. Enns says on page 27 of Telling God’s Story, he wants to help parents teach the Bible in a way that “brings out the full complexity and power of the Bible’s vision.”

Next in this series: Does God fail?

From page 32, for instance:

“…children should be introduced to Jesus without parents feeling the pressure of downloading every important piece of biblical teaching into their young minds at the same time.”

To see this age-appropriate presentation in action, we invite parents to read through the first grade book (Year One). We’ve made the entire book available on Scribd.com for free for a limited time.   The Year One lessons clearly discuss the child’s disobedience and sin when such discussion is appropriate (usually using concrete examples), as well as admitting the sins of adults. Redemption, too, is emphasized: the crucifixion is described as happening “to save the people from their sins.” The textbooks for the succeeding years will discuss these topics in increasing detail.

In our next post: is the Bible “a mess”?

DR. PETER ENNS, Speaking in Duke 260-262

 THURSDAY 8:00–9:00 PM: Teaching the Bible to Your Child: Where Should You Start?

What are the first Bible stories that a child should know? Should you teach the Old Testament before the New—or the other way around? How about the really difficult parts—should you tackle those head on, or wait until the child is older?  In this workshop, I suggest that the best place to start is not with “Bible stories” (Noah’s ark, David and Goliath), but rather with Jesus. Jesus is the center of the Christian faith and the proper place to start a child’s Christian education. In grades 1-4, students should get to know him the way the first followers of Jesus did: through his teachings, healings, interactions with his opponents, etc. In grades 5-8, young students should take a huge step back and focus on the big picture of Israel’s Story, the Old Testament; this helps give a greater sense of how Jesus brings Israel’s story to its conclusion. In grades 9-12, students should focus on the historical setting of the Bible. The Bible was not written in a vacuum; knowing something about the cultures in which the Bible was written will help them develop a mature understanding.

 FRIDAY 2:30-3:30 PM: Struggling With Your Faith (and What God is Teaching You Through It)

All Christians struggle with their faith in various seasons of their lives. Too often Christians think something is “wrong” with them or that their faith is “weak.” But the Bible talks a lot about spiritual struggles without sugarcoating the pain and doubt. From Scripture we learn that struggling with our faith is a normal and necessary part of our Christian journey. True spiritual growth always involves passing through the difficult times, not around them. Most importantly, struggling with faith gives parents a chance to model meaningful spiritual growth for their children, and thus give them a lesson that will last a lifetime.

 SATURDAY 10-11 AM: The Bible and Parents: Reading the Bible as God’s Story

Christian parents bear the responsibility of teaching the Bible to their children. But if parents themselves are uncomfortable with the Bible, or not familiar with what it is designed to do (and not do), teaching children can be a difficult and frustrating experience. Too often the tendency is to read parts of books or verses here and there. When read this way, the Bible becomes simply a moral guide or a Christian “how-to” book, where readers expect moral or religious guidance on every page, and are frustrated when they don’t find it. Rather, the Bible is a grand narrative, a big story, with beginning, middle, and end. In this workshop, we will look at that grand narrative, and see how reading it as it was intended to be read changes our experience of God’s Word.