I grew up in a Christian family and went to church services every week, which included going to children’s Sunday School, and mid-week youth programmes. I would have heard more than a thousand sermons or lessons before I became a teenager, yet I didn’t fully grasp the concept of what the Bible is until I was an adult.
I currently have the opportunity of asking myself “what would have helped the 8 year-old me to understand the Bible more and sooner?” This is because an 8 year-old lives in my household, and I’m a volunteer leader in our local church’s Sunday morning children’s programme – we call it ‘Royal Kids’ (the church is in a suburb called Royal Oak).
Keep reading to see how I introduced the Bible to a bunch of 4-11 year-olds:
The hope was to help them grasp the concept sooner than I did, which wasn’t until I was in my 20’s – the comments in [square brackets] are additional reflections to the lesson. Note that all of the kids were regular attenders so the Bible wasn’t a brand new concept to them.
Big idea: What is the Bible?
I presented a selection of everyday kids books in the middle of the group, pulling them out of a bag one at a time, seeking a description from the kids about what each book is. The photo above show the books I used, all from my 8 year-old’s bookshelf:
- The Lego ideas book
- Alfred’s Premier Piano Course
- Fact Planet: Volcanoes
- Māui and other legends
- Kia Ora – Air New Zealand inflight magazine
- World’s cutest cats and kittens
- Dog Man
- Horrible Histories: England
The point of this selection was to illustrate different genres of writing, without relying on an understanding of the word or concept of ‘genre’.
Once all the books were spread on the floor, we discussed this question:
“What do you notice about these books? (Are they all the same?)”
The kids got the point. It wasn’t a comic collection, or a bunch of story books. All the books were different, and I watched as various kids were drawn to certain books – the youngest child wanted to talk a LOT about volcanos and shared her desire to be a scientist when she grows up. I then bundled the books together with a large rubber band and placed the collection upright before them [this is the plane-landing moment for the visual learners]:
This big idea was unpacked like this:
The Bible is like this bundle of books — it’s actually a whole library of different books:
- written by lots of different people (more than 40 writers),
- over a very long time (around 1500 years).
- Some bits are stories,
- some are songs,
- some are instructions,
- some are letters,
- some are history,
- some are poetry.
And they all got bundled together (66 ‘books’ in total), into what we today know as the Bible [and I showed a hard-copy Bible of my own and we scanned down the Contents page to see the 66 different books. I also explained how the entire Bible is also on my phone, one of the other leaders opened up the Bible on their phone and showed the list of books…]
The origin of the word Bible (some etymology)
One day twenty years ago I was sitting in the public square of a small town in Spain. I don’t speak or read Spanish, but I remember looking at the words engraved in the facade of a building: “La biblioteca půblica” which is literally the public library. I could see it was a library, and I remember at that moment enjoying the link between ‘biblioteca’, ‘library’, and ‘Bible’ as Christianity’s ‘little library’.
Photo credit: by Chris Luengas on Unsplash
With the children, I quickly took them through the history and evolution of some Greek and Latin words so our current ‘Bible’ word might gain some logic and meaning.
Being a small group of children, my prop for this was a piece of card with a hand-drawn list, showing the word origin, history and evolution as:
biblos = papyrus plant –> writing material –> scroll –> book
biblia = books
ta biblia = the books
During this bit two unplanned and excellent things happened:
- One of the other leaders found a photo of papyrus plants on her phone and showed the kids.
- The other leader knew specifically how writing material was made from the papyrus plant and described that to the children.
[This is obviously a very basic introduction to the word origins of ‘Bible’ – the point being to add meaning to the word rather than it just being a name without meaning.]
Second/supplementary big idea: inspired by God
Christians believe all the books in this ‘little library’ were breathed out by God. What does that mean?!
Theres a line in one of the letters in the Bible that says:
“All Scripture is God-breathed” 2 Timothy 3:16
[God-breathed means inspired by God.]
We talked about being inspired to do something
- Can you think of something you’ve done because you were inspired to do it?
- Who inspires you to do things? (friends, parents, teachers,…)
The many writers of the books in the Bible heard or sensed from God and their writing came out of that. They were inspired by God and wrote from that inspiration. There’s a bit of mystery with how we understand that happening. [this wasn’t the time to go into biblical literalism, etc.]
Being God-breathed or God inspired makes the Bible “God’s special book” [hence being very unique, but not “God’s magic book”].
Bible text: Psalm 1:1–3
[pivoting now to actually read something from “God’s special book”]
I asked one of the older kids to read:
Great blessings belong to those
who don’t listen to evil advice,
who don’t live like sinners,
and who don’t join those who make fun of God.[a]
2 Instead, they love the Lord’s teachings
and think about them day and night.
3 So they grow strong,
like a tree planted by a stream—
a tree that produces fruit when it should
and has leaves that never fall.
Everything they do is successful.
Discussion questions
- “What kind of writing is this — a story, a song, or a letter?” [It’s a poem/song!]
- What does it mean to “love” something? “they love the Lord’s teachings”
- What’s good about a tree planted by a stream? [Always has what it needs]
- How is reading the Bible like that tree getting water?
Activity: Creating our own “little library”
Our group of children are pretty good at engaging with paper/drawing activities. This time each child was given a basic A4 page with a short list at the top of different types of writing/drawing they could do, with the instruction to choose one of them:
- A letter to someone you love
- A short story from your life
- A prayer written as a poem
- A list of things you’re thankful for
- A picture with a caption
- A question you’d ask God
I showed them the cover page I had printed and explained that we’d collect up what they wrote or drew, and they would be on display on the wall in our Royal Kids space. We spent 10 minutes on this activity.
After gathering the pages up (and some kids did more than one), I stappled them together in front of them:
“Look — we’ve just made our own little library. Different types of writing, by different people, all bundled together. That’s what the Bible is like!”
Reflection & response: “What’s one thing you’ll remember from today?”
[Reinforcing the big idea:]
The Bible is God’s library
- many types of writing,
- many voices,
- one God behind them all.
- When we read it, we’re like that tree by the stream: we get what we need to grow.
Closing prayer
We thanked God for the ‘little library’, that God speaks to us through it. We asked for hearts that want to read it this week.
The Acts 2 Movement | He haruru nui
Our church and denomination have just started a seven-year journey toward celebrating 2000 years of the church in the world (the year 2033), being guided by a global programme the Baptist World Alliance has initiated for Baptist churches called The Acts 2 Movement. There are 5 ‘pathways’, one of them is ‘Bible’.
At my own local church we’re framing these pathways as ‘Practicing the Way’ and recently it was ‘Scripture’ (the Bible pathway), and my turn to lead the children’s programme, hence this lesson: What is the Bible? (for kids and adults like me).
Find out more about The Acts 2 Movement with the BWA: acts2movement.org, and with New Zealand Baptists: acts2.baptist.nz
Additional reflections
I’m quite visual in my learning, and for me, in this lesson it’s the three images of the variety of books spread out, and then seeing them bundled together, and then creating our own collection and bundling them together, that I think would have captivated me as an 8 year-old. This has stuck with my own 8 year-old.
Of course I knew about the various books when I was younger – too many failed “sword drills” in Sunday School as a child had taught me there were different sections and a way of organising. But I never grasped the concept of different genres, different authors, different times and audiences and purposes.
Bonus extra reading
See also my chapter: Practicing a Visual Spirituality: Fueling Your Eyes When Your Faith Depends on It. In: ‘It Works: Stories of Transformative Spiritual Practices’ editors Philip Halstead & Angelika Halstead published by Wipf & Stock, 2025.
Access the book from any library, or buy online.
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