This week we have been spending more time at church. A couple of days this week Erin and I were asked to help organize some children's material that has been donated to our church, UCF. I was unsure of what to expect but we were shown large piles of papers and books that covered nearly three desktops. All of the things that we found were some sort or portion of children's ministry curriculum produced in the states. We threw away a lot of stuff.
The children's director at UCF thought that Erin and I might be able to understand the curriculum better than she could. Which make sense because eighty percent of the material we looked through began with something like: "Before you begin; gather the glue, glitter, scissors, contraction paper and yarn. After welcoming the children and giving them their name tags tell them to gather at the activity table and talk about how privileged you are to be an American..."Ok actually none of them had the privileged American part, but so much of the stuff we found was so irrelevant to the context in which we now find ourselves. We found lessons on giving that talked about what they should do with extra allowance and pictures throughout the material of white children playing in well groomed parks or sitting at their computers. I could go on and on.
I am not saying that the Sunday School lessons like I mentioned above are all bad in and of themselves, only some of them had really bad theology. What struck me the most is that over the years whoever donated these items to UCF probably could have given a bit more thought to who would best receive this material.
We were able to find some material that will be helpful to the teachers and to the students. That material we kept we organized by grade/Sunday School class. Because we went through all of these items it is now assumed that we may have ideas or ways to help the sunday school teachers. Which is fine, I just feel inadequate, I wish I had my mother here to really help them out (my mom has been a children's director at her church for many years).
After we finished organizing, one teacher approached us and asked if there was any resource that could help her teach through Mark 12:41-44 (the story about the poor widow's gift of her last two coins). Erin and I reached for a book that helped to explain passages for kids and had ideas about activities to do with them. The activity that corresponded to this story was to have the kids make coins out of play dough and either act out the story or just talk about what a small gift two coins were. Erin and I offered to make some play dough, there are recipes all over the internet, to bring to the teacher for her lesson. The play dough was made and ready to go Saturday night but then we decided to put some food coloring in it. The food coloring made the mixture way too runny and we thought we fixed the problem, boy were we wrong.
I ended up in the classroom to help the teacher with the play dough activity. After all the children received the play dough it began to sort of dissolve in their hands and made a huge mess. We had to take them to wash their hands at the church's one bathroom and made a huge scene. I felt so terrible! Here we were trying to help and I made a big gooey mess.
I have some more learning to do. I did something similar to all those people who donated the irrelevant curriculum to UCF. My desire was to help engage the kids but my efforts resulted in distraction. My prayer is that the Spirit would lead us to what is most helpful and beneficial to His Kingdom work.
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