Do you want to teach your kids the Bible but feel unsure about how to start?
Does your schedule already feel too packed, like there’s just no time to add teaching your kids the Bible into the mix?
If you’ve been there before, welcome! This post is written with you in mind.
This post is all about how to get started teaching your kids the Bible.
Do you need a resource to use to teach your kids the Bible? Download the NEW Attributes of God 30-Day Family Devotional!
4 Easy Steps to Teaching Your Kids the Bible
In this post, we talked about how to establish a Bible reading habit for yourself. And if you start reading the Bible more regularly, it’s going to spill over into your conversations with your kids.
You’ll find you have opportunities to talk about Scripture with your kids and teach them the Bible spontaneously.
In fact, that’s what we talked about in this post – how to talk to your kids about faith in a natural way.
What will happen as you grow your faith and start talking about your faith more is that you’ll want to start teaching your kids the Bible more intentionally and regularly.
You’ll love the spontaneity of random conversations that lead to discipleship opportunities … but you’ll also want to be intentional about bringing up faith topics with your kids regularly.
But how do we do that? Especially if we haven’t been doing it all along?
How do we get started with teaching our kids the Bible?
I think there are four steps to getting started, and I’m going to go ahead and share those with you so you can start to wrap your mind around this idea:
Teaching your kids the Bible doesn’t have to be complicated.
It might not be perfect or seamless as you introduce this as part of the family routine, but it CAN be done.
And it can be done without it being a huge production involving craft supplies, video content, or a degree in Bible.
(If you’re ready to start teaching your kids the Bible and want to make a realistic plan that is specific to your family, your schedule, and your needs, download the Quick Start Guide to Family Bible Time. It comes with 10 free devotions you can use right away, so once you have a plan in place you’re not waiting around for a resource to use!)
Here are the four steps to getting started with teaching your kids the Bible:
- Decide what you’ll do.
- Decide when you’ll do it.
- Try it for a while.
- Adjust as needed.
There are two decisions you’ll need to make in order to teach your kids the Bible regularly rather than just as things come up in conversation. Those two decisions are the first two steps.
The first decision is what you will do, and the second decision is when you will do it.
And know that these two decisions can be adjusted as needed.
Your kids will get older, your schedule will change, and at times you’ll be walking through things specific to your season that are going to impact what you use to teach your kids the Bible and when you do it.
So know that you aren’t married to these two decisions. This is just what you need to do to get started.
So let’s walk through those two decisions. You might even be able to make them before the end of this post.
First, what will you do, or what will you use, to teach your kids the Bible?
When deciding what you’ll do, I wouldn’t recommend trying to create your own curriculum. I wouldn’t recommend purchasing something that requires supplies beyond just having a Bible accessible. And I wouldn’t recommend something that takes longer than a few minutes to do.
And here’s why.
We already feel like we have too much on our plates. This is already a struggle to fit into our family’s routine. So choosing to try to write your own devotional or choosing a resource that requires lots of time and effort to accomplish is going to be dropped on the first busy day, and it will be hard to pick it back up again.
You do not have to do kids church or youth group at home in order to teach your kids the Bible … and I would say you shouldn’t. Discipling your kids shouldn’t feel like an event or program.
Instead, it should feel like a conversation – a dialogue between you and your kids for the purpose of learning more about God.
The easiest way to accomplish that is to choose between going through a book of the Bible or using a devotional.
If you choose a book of the Bible, you don’t need to purchase anything else. You can just pick a book and start. You could read a section at a time in a book of the Bible and ask your kids what they think that passage teaches about God and whether they can pick out anything God is instructing them to believe or do.
It could literally look like this:
- Start by reading a section of one chapter of a book of the Bible – use the heading that are already there.
- Then, ask your kids how they would summarize the main point.
- Then, ask them what we can learn about God from that passage.
- Then, ask them if there is any sort of instruction from God that we can take from the passage.
Then just let them talk!
If you choose a devotional, there will be some sort of additional thought or some question prompts to get your conversation going. Use them!
For both options, there can be a mix of adults or kids reading as well as contributing to the conversation.
The idea here is to choose something very simple and straightforward to use so that it actually happens.
The more simple the method is, the easier it will be to pick it back up again if you miss a few days, too.
The second decision you’ve got to make, and the second step on the list, is to decide when you’ll teach your kids the Bible.
Here’s where you need to remind yourself again that discipleship is not having kids church or youth group inside the walls of your home every day for a set amount of time.
Most of the things we teach our kids are taught as we go rather than through a highly organized presentation followed by a craft and games.
That’s why simply reading Scripture and talking about it can be really effective. It’s more conversation-based, and it feels a lot more like the “as we go” approach that we take with other things we teach our kids.
When you’re trying to decide when you’ll teach your kids the Bible, here’s what I would recommend: Ask yourself what times of day your people are generally together and talking, and choose one of those times.
Do you eat breakfast together in the morning? Do you eat dinner together most nights? Does everyone ride together to and from school each day? Do you all tend to be in the living room right before bedtime most evenings?
Whatever time you are all generally together could be a time you could read the Bible together and have a short conversation about it.
Sure, some days something might come up. But if you can identify a time that – generally speaking – you are all together, that’s a time you can use to teach your kids the Bible.
It’s ok to talk about God in the car. It’s ok to talk about a Bible verse at the dinner table. It’s ok to practice a memory verse at random times throughout your week.
The idea here is just to choose a time of day that you think will generally work to add Bible time into the routine.
The third and fourth steps you can take to start teaching your kids the Bible kind of go hand in hand. Step 3 is to try it for a while, and Step 4 is to adjust as needed.
We know from experience that not every idea works the way we think it will in our heads.
Give yourself permission to experiment with adding this to your routine. Teaching your kids the Bible is important enough for you to prioritize it, and part of prioritizing it is being open-handed about what it ends up looking like.
If you’ve already tried or been taught a method that absolutely doesn’t work for you and your family – here’s where I give you permission to not use that method.
- If you’ve tried doing breakfast-time devotions and it was a disaster, pick a different time.
- If you’ve tried talking about a verse in the car and your kids can’t stop fighting, pick a different place.
- If you started reading through a book of the Bible but that felt bulky or your kids couldn’t focus, try a devotional.
- If you’ve done devotionals before and always end up hating them, just pick a book of the Bible and read through it slowly.
Try something for long enough to see if it’s working … I would say give it a week at least … but then release any guilt you feel over something not working and just adjust as you need to.
The goal is to be intentional about teaching your kids what the Bible says about who God is, not to force yourself into a plan that sounds right but ultimately no one benefits from.
The way we are going to accomplish actually teaching our kids the Bible is to decide what we will do, decide when we will do it, try it for a while, and adjust as needed.
It will take a long time to teach our kids all that we think they need to know about God.
What’s that saying about eating an elephant? You accomplish it by taking one bite at a time.
If we want our kids to know God, they need to know what God teaches about Himself in the Bible.
If we want our kids to know the Bible, we’ve got to teach it to them.
And the best, most effective way to teach it to them is to teach it regularly in manageable chunks.
If we prioritize doing something to teach our kids the Bible most days, then we will have kids that know the Bible.
That might look like Bible time for your family that occurs in the same time and place every day. It might look like you asking them about their day and steering your feedback about the things they’ve gone through back to the character of God or back to Scripture. It might look like doing a full on Bible study with your teenager where you meet up once a week and discuss what you’ve both been learning.
There are lots of ways for the four steps I mentioned in this post to actually be lived out in your family.
The ultimate goal is to have kids that choose to follow Jesus, so we’ve got to make it a priority to teach them about Him.
Take Action to Start Teaching Your Kids the Bible
We’re going to end with an action step you can take today.
If your brain is already working and you are coming up with ideas for how and when you could teach your kids the Bible:
- Today’s action step it to find me on Instagram – I’m @faithtalksdaily – and send me a DM to tell me what you are going to do to teach your kids the Bible and when you’re going to try doing it.
If you are feeling resistance or confusion around the topic of teaching your kids the Bible:
- Today’s action step is to go to FaithTalksDaily.com and download the free Quick Start Guide to Family Bible Time. That free resource is going to help you figure out what’s been holding you back and how to make a plan that works for your family.
Quick Links
Connect with Faith Talks Daily
- NEW RELEASE: Attributes of God 30-Day Family Devotional: https://faithtalksdaily.com/attributes-of-god/
- www.instagram.com/faithtalksdaily
- www.facebook.com/faithtalksdaily
Do you need a resource to use to teach your kids the Bible? Download the NEW Attributes of God 30-Day Family Devotional!