“Have you Ever Wondered if you can trust the Bible?”
In June our Bible Adventure and Christians in Action team attended a conference at the Answers in Genesis Conference Center at the Ark Encounter location in Williamstown, KY. This is a conference where programs from all over the United States gather to equip leaders for ministering to public school students through the Released Time Law. Joy El has been doing released time for over 50 years and we continue to hone our skills and knowledge to serve the 105 programs in close to 30 school districts that God has entrusted to our care.
Elizabeth Urbanowicz was one of our speakers. She works full time with Foundation Comparative Worldview, using curriculum that she has created to provide comparative worldviews and apologetics resources for children. She asked the question of 3rd-5th graders, “Have you ever wondered if you can trust the Bible?” 79% said yes, they wondered that!
Elizabeth reminded us, that in our current society, sometimes it seems as if, as Lucille Ball stated in her famous episode at the candy factor, “I think we’re fighting a losing game!” So much is moving so fast!
In our modern cultural and educational climate, where more and more students are lacking even basic skills and understanding of the Bible, we learned 3 basic transferrable skills for grounding our students in the Biblical Worldview. These “critical thinking” tools equipped us to share God’s truth in a way that will have a lasting effect on students.
- Teach skills that will foster life-long Biblical reading. (Teach children to dig into God’s word and see where their verse or lesson fits in the whole Biblical story). We do this in our curriculum by sharing the 4 chapter gospel components in every lesson (to see how the entire Bible fits and talks about Jesus throughout).
- Equip students to see that the Bible speaks to all of life (including how life began-Gen. chapters 1-11). They need to know that God designed and created all that is for a purpose.
- Show how a Biblical worldview aligns with reality. This is critical for our students today. We learned how to lead students to see that feelings do not always mean truth. There is provable and absolute truth. The Christian Worldview offers them a life that is purposeful and has inherent meaning.
As we interact this summer with our students who are here at Joy El at summer camp, we continue to help them grapple with difficult questions and to find God’s ultimate truth in a relationship with Jesus! They leave knowing they can “Trust in the Lord with all of their heart, and not lean on their own understanding…” Prov. 3:5
