This Sunday marks the relaunch of Wellfield and our first day with our new church family! It also means a new Sunday club series for Mikey. This term it’s 1 Peter.

1 Peter sounded like a great idea until I sat down to read it to work out how to teach it to the boys!! It’s been brain-stretching so far, but exciting to feel that it is possible.

How about I share some of my thinking and the play I’ve been planning for this week?

I start off by writing out the passage (1 Peter 1:1-2). It’s NIV which is the Bible I have for personal reading. I’m a scribbler, so it works for me to get things down on paper.

There were bits I didn’t really understand (this often happens to me!) so I also checked out ESV and NLT and also chatted it through with Dave. I’m really trying to understand the passage for myself before I even think about how and what I’m going to teach the boys.

Once I feel it’s clear in my head I start thinking about how I can work out the main point I want to teach the boys.

The main focus of the passage seems to be who the readers are because of God’s work through Jesus: elect, strangers, scattered, chosen, sanctified, sprinkled. These qualities can give them amazing confidence and security in their uncertain circumstances (scattered strangers). The phrase ‘elect exiles’ in the ESV makes me think of Daniel in Babylon and the challenge to him to remain faithful and trusting that God was with him – the Christians reading Peter’s letter were facing the same thing.

But am I going to teach that to my boys?! Well, not yet – this is obvious but it needs to be said – there is no point teaching things the boys won’t understand. I think we sometimes feel like the Bible is magic and that simply by earnestly teaching everything it will somehow transform our children. The Bible is powerful but there can be no expectation that my children will understand a biblical concept that they can’t grasp in the rest of life!

So what am I going to go for here? Well the idea of being chosen/elect seems to run through the passage – that is why they’re strangers in the world, that is why they’re secure. I’m going to go for that I think.

But the concept of being “chosen” by God is hard. There are plenty of great play ideas you could do with the kids but what would you say to support the teaching? I don’t feel I can say “God chose you”, because although I pray he has, I simply can’t assume it! Saying “God chose me/mummy” is just too smug and also abstract for the boys to grasp. I’m certainly not going to add words and make it even more impersonal and dry by saying “Christians are chosen by God”… true as it is, they’d be begging for nap time!

So why not change the word but keep the sense of it and talk about “belonging”?

• Theologically it is true that we all belong to God, so I feel comfortable talking about the boys belonging to God.
• It fits with the message of the passage. Belonging could be swapped for “chosen/elect” and the meaning could remain.

So…
We’re going to do some lovely play about belonging and I’ll post play ideas tomorrow!