Wednesday, July 22, 2009

thinking about progressive youth ministry...

..and what the heck to do with our TWEENS next year for Sunday School. I am not going to waste money on buying the Sunday School curriculum, because, as one volunteer noted, she was "underwhelmed" with it.

Found some good blogs out there through a very good site for progressive Christian educators called Different Voice

It has some great links, and I resonate with the core values.

What about you? What do you use for Sunday a.m. resources with your 6-7-8 graders?

5 comments:

Unknown said...

In both churches I've been serving, they are using Seasons of the Spirit. At Freeport the teacher is adapting the mid-elementary curriculum to a group that has mostly 6-7-8s in it. At Yarmouth the teachers seemed to be satisfied with it for 5-6 (and anyone older who wants to come), though I think the older kids really went to Confirmation during the week and not to Sunday School at all.

God_Guurrlll said...

Have you looked at Come Gather Round. It is a curriculum written by the Anabaptists which has a strong peace and social justice component to it. Another curriculum which you can get totally online is "whole people of God" Just put that phrase in google and it will come up.

I'm curious, which curriculum has your church used. You can email it to me if you don't want to put it on a blog.

LYMI

Terri said...

What a great age group to work with - tough, but I love 'em! I've often just made up my own curriculum using the parish goals and the various abilities and interests of the kids to guide the direction ie social justice? building community?

Unknown said...

As progressive Christian educator, I too have found it hard to find theologically sound curriculum to use with young people. One resource I like is a book called "Way to Live" written for and by teens (and adults) about using spiritual practices in daily life. The book has a companion website (waytolive.org) which has a free teaching guide you can download to use with the book.
Peace!

revkjarla said...

This past year we used Cokesbury "Solid Rock" for the TWEEN group. Our high school group has totally latched onto the Joan of Arcadia t.v. series--there is a curriculum you can buy and download from the PCUSA, and it is really excellent. I have used the other resources everyone has mentioned, so I feel better...but the TWEENs are so tweeny--active, loud, amazing, and hard. (these are my 6-7th grades) My volunteer teachers need more support and options, I think...so I will piece some stuff together...