The Story Behind the Learning Guides This thesis/project grew out of two needs. The first need was personal. Several years ago I realized that even though I was a graduate of a Christian college with a B.A. in Bible and a graduate of a seminary with a Th.M. in Old Testament, I didn’t know how to teach my own children the Bible. We had memorized verses together, read the Bible at meals and read books together like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I didn’t feel equipped to systematically teach them the truth of Scripture. This left me feeling frustrated and inadequate. On occasion I would wander into a Christian bookstore and look in the family or children section for something to help me teach my children the Word. I found very little help. There were some practical and well-written family devotional guides, but I wanted to do more than have a devotional time with my kids. I wanted to ground my kids in the Word through the use of good Bible study methods. More than a devotional time and more than memorizing Bible “lists,” I wanted to start my kids out on a journey of discovering God in the Bible through the use of solid hermeneutical principles. I wanted them to begin shaping a biblical theology in their minds that would give them a foundation for life. A couple of years before I began the Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Renewal in the Family of God, I started to look at my “quiet time” with the Lord. I saw an opportunity to get something out of my time with the Lord and in the Word that could benefit my children. I started doing a personal inductive study of the Word beginning in Genesis. After an inductive study of the Bible, I produced a one page outline of the biblical theology of the book I had studied. Included on that outline was a one sentence central message of the book, several key theological themes, a brief memorable outline, key verses, Christological aspects in each book that I called “Jesus in Genesis” (Exodus, Leviticus, etc.) and life lessons. The one page outlines were entitled, “What I Want My Kids to Learn from Genesis (Exodus, Leviticus, etc.). By the time I entered the D. Min. program, I had completed outlines through Chronicles. This thesis project grew out of a second need: pastoral. Pastors usually say something like this to parents: “It’s primarily the parents’ responsibility to teach their children the Word, to train them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Although pastors say that, we often feel very frustrated by the fact that we don’t know how to help parents teach their children God’s Word. When they respond to us, “We are willing to train our children in the Scriptures, but how do we do it?” we don’t know what to say. A curriculum that empowered parents to teach their own children the Bible didn’t seem to exist. Also, around the time I entered the D. Min. program our church was conducting a curriculum search for our elementary age children. We were having a difficult time finding a curriculum that met our needs. Many of the curriculums seemed either to use a story like Jonah or Noah to teach good moral principles but had little to do with the theological message or themes of the book, to teach children to memorize Bible verses and lists or to take them systematically through the Bible without connecting the stories with progressive revelation or employing sound hermeneutical method. I desired for the children of our church to develop a solid approach to the Scriptures that would serve them well for a lifetime of biblical study, interpretation and application. I wanted them to encounter the God and live in the kingdom of God that is progressively revealed in various living cultures and historical contexts through different types of literature: narratives, poems, parables, epistles, prophecies, apocalypse, proverbs, etc. When the subject of my thesis-project arose early in the D. Min. program I decided on designing such a curriculum that would address these two needs: personal and pastoral. It would be a curriculum that would empower parents to teach their children the Bible and biblical theology.