Living as Christians

In this unit, you will read texts from New Testament letters that are a bit of a mystery. However sparse the information about the writer and the original recipient, each letter has a message that was relevant to the believers then and to the church today. As is the case with most of the letters in the New Testament, the writer is advising a group or person as they struggle with how to be faithful to Christ’s teachings many years after Jesus was walking among them on earth. All have a moral teaching for congregations as well as individual Christians. From them we can decipher issues faced by the early church and the followers of Jesus. They were trying to figure out how to get along together. They wondered how they could, together and individually, walk in God’s light. They struggled to turn their proclamations of faith and belief into actions that express the same thing. Finally, they looked around to see who they might use as models of faithfulness and sought to follow those examples.

Stories included in this unit:

• A Loving Heart Helps Others (James 1:19–24; 2:1–7)
• Light and Darkness (1 John 1:5–10)
• Things We Do and Things We Say (1 John 3:18–24)
• Making Smart Choices (3 John 11)

Growing in God’s Love: A Story Bible Curriculum invites children and their leaders to wonder, play, and connect with one another as they develop a better relationship with God. By exploring the stories in Growing in God’s Love: A Story Bible, children and their leaders learn more about who God is and what their relationship is with God. This curriculum has 35 units filled with 148 stories from the story Bible that dive deep into characters and themes in the Bible. Children and their leader will read the story together from the story Bible, pause to allow the story to resonate, and then engage with the story and wrestle with their place in that story.

Growing in God’s Love: A Story Bible Curriculum is written for ages 5–10 and is intentionally multiage, meaning that children are all grouped together. Grouping children this way brings a relational focus to the sessions and fosters a collaborative spirit. The curriculum also includes an intergenerational component with four suggestions for intergenerational and home ideas for each session within a unit. Those ideas include suggestions for things to do in worship, more education-focused ideas, ways to connect with one another, and mission ideas. This adds another dimension to learning and helps the children connect to the congregation, creating a holistic approach to children’s ministry.