We are excited to offer lesson plans for the stories contained on the CD "Tales of the Journey". This is a work in progress! We strongly request your input on these pages.

Teacher's Guide

Bible Stories for Adults

Welcome to Bible Stories for Adults. This is an innovative way of leading an adult class through a Bible study. The topic for this series is "The Journey and uses the Storytelling CD entitled Tales of the Journey by John Walsh. These lesson plans are provided free of charge for your use in a Bible study setting.

This series takes six Bible stories and examines them in a way where the entire class becomes involved in the teaching process. Its emphasis of this series moves you out of the position of being a "teacher of knowledge," and makes you a "supervisor of learning." Each lesson plan has more ideas than you will want to use. This is done so you can make choices that will fit your personality and the character of your group.

These lessons try to be sensitive to the difference in people. Some are extroverts and are more than willing to participate. Others are glad to be there, but do not want to stand up and do anything. You will find that by making this clear to everyone, the class will relax and enjoy the sessions. You will be surprised as the weeks go by how much the introverts of the group will become involved.

The purpose of this teacher's guide is to provide the overall structure of these classes. It also defines terms and gives instruction on how all of the activities are conducted.

Overall Structure

Start the series by introducing what is about to happen. The class should be told that your approach for the next few weeks will be a little different than what they are possibly use to. Explain that you will be asking for volunteers to help since the class times will be much more interactive. No one will be asked to participate who is uncomfortable with doing so. Still, since this is a little new to you, you are asking for their help as much as possible.

Explain that you are using the series Tales for the Journey as your lesson guild. You will be taking two session to examine each story on the CD.

Session One

• Start by having a volunteer read the story from the Bible.

• Next play the story from the CD. The smallest story is five minutes long and the longest is 15 minutes.

• Have the class work though several activities as time permits. It is best to maintain time limits on each activity to keep the interest level high. Better to cut something off a little short while the interest is still there, then to go too long.

• Assign homework to a few volunteers in preparation for the next class. Emphasize the importance of keeping their reports short. A few of these volunteers are:
  • A web search – 5 minutes
  • Someone to prepare a short story – 8 minutes
  • Word studies – 5 minutes
  • Skit preparation – 8 minutes

Session Two

• Once again start by having a volunteer read the story from the Bible.

• Next have the various volunteers give their reports.

• Choose from the list of activities provided.

Again, we are providing you with too many activities for the time period. Choose the ones that fits the interest of your class and helps them gain the most from the Scripture.

These lesson plans are a work in progress. We have provided you a message board for each lesson on the website. When you use an idea and it works well, tell us so others can be encouraged. When an idea doesn't work, tell us, so other can possibly choose something different. When you try something that is not listed and it is effective, tell us so we can add it to the lesson plans. We will acknowledge you as the one who sent us the idea.

Issues within the story

Each lesson starts by examining the issues involved in the Bible story. The stories on the CD have been thoroughly researched by the storyteller and he has drawn certain conclusions. He has interpreted the passage based on those conclusions. Still, Bible stories give a lot of latitude to meet the needs of many different types of people.

Therefore it is important to ask the class, "What are the issues in this Bible story? Is the storyteller's interpretation correct? How do we see the tension and emotions of the story?" Possibly read the ones given in the lesson, and then let them add to the list. Use the conclusions of this discussion to determine how you proceed with the activities. Possibly change them a little to fit how your class views the story.

Activities and Definitions

Certain activities are repeated with every set of lessons. You may decide to use it with every story, because the class enjoys it and it makes a tremendous impact on their lives. There again, you may choose to vary the activities from time to time to add variety to the flow of the class.

Group discussions are general and meant to set the stage for other activities. Therefore they should be kept short so they do not dominate the entire time. Long discussions are usually only enjoyed by a small group of people. Everyone else will lose interest as time goes by. The class will remain exciting if you limit discussion time and make room for the other activities.

Here is the list of activities with their instructions.

First Impressions – Once the Bible story has been told, the audience is usually still trying process what they thought and felt about what they just heard. They may not be ready to launch into a discussion about what the main issues are. First they want to express something about what their impressions were.

Here are the three questions that are generally asked.

1. What parts of the story do you like?
2. How well does John represent the various characters?
3. What are the weak areas of the story?

It is more important to ask questions then give answers. The purpose with this activity is not finding answers, but to give people time to rehearse the story in their minds. When you don't give answers, it prompts members in the class to express an opinion.

How Many Can You Name – Once the class has had a few minutes to give their first impressions about John's story, move them into a discussion about what issues are presented in the story from the Bible. The lesson gives a few ideas that you may want to present to the class.

To keep control of the time and still get in a good discussion, you may decide to set the egg timer and play "How Many Can You Name." The objective is to name as many possible issues as can be done before moving on to the next activity.

Tell a Time – This is time when everyone is involved. The class is divided into groups of twos or threes. Most of the time, it is recommended that you encourage everyone to sit with someone new. This is a person who is not a spouse, best friend, or someone the sat with last time. Still, be sensitive that some people do not feel comfortable meeting new people.

The lesson will make a statement that starts, "Tell a time when …" Use you egg timer and allow each person two minutes to tell about that time in his/her lives.

After both have told their account, you may want to say, "Who heard a tremendous story in the last five minutes?" Once you have given time for people to raise their hands, ask, "Who would like to volunteer their partner to tell their story to the entire class? This is a story that you are saying, 'Everyone needs to hear this!'"

Imbedded Reporter – You select someone who is willing to pretend to have been at the scene of the story and saw it all happen first hand. There is no question you can ask this person that they don't know the answer to. They are to simply make it up as they go along.

As strange as this activity seems, it is a great tool for helping people realize that the Bible is real and that the characters in the story were real live people. Many have reported that it has changed how they read the Bible.

There are two ways to conduct this activity, with the entire class together or by dividing the class into groups of fours and fives. If you divide up into smaller groups, keep them all in the same room. I will give the instructions as if you were going to divide the class into groups of four and fives.

Each group is to select a volunteer for their group. This person is now called "the storyteller." The rest of the people in the group will move their chairs so they are facing their storyteller.

The teacher of the class will ask questions loud enough so everyone in the room can hear. Questions like, "What time of year is it?" The storytellers are to immediately envisioned the time of year and tell their groups what time of year the story took place and describe what they see concerning this. "It is summer, and it is really hot! There is very little breeze and the flies are very bad this year. etc."

If one of the storytellers say "I don't know," the rest of the people in that group is to say loud enough so everyone else in the room can hear, "THEN MAKE IT UP!" This fun part of the activity is explained in another section.

The purpose of this activity and the next is to help your class to picture the people in the Bible as real. God stepped into the lives of people who were doing ordinary things and had ordinary concerns. Once they see the story from this view point, they will never forget it.

At the Scene – Ask for two volunteers. The same volunteers could be used for every story, or you could make of point of using different ones each time.

The activity will give you two characters from the story who should be interviewed. Your volunteers are to go into character and pretend they are their assigned person. As much as possible, they are to stay in character for this entire activity.

It would be preferable to have men portray the men of the story, and women portray the women. But if the class is not mixed, then both parts can be portrayed by either men or women.

Questions are provided to get you started, but you should be conscious of question that you may think of while a pervious answer is being given. The first part of the interview should always give the person a chance to tell us a little about them self. Make sure the volunteer understands that during the first few questions, they should portray themselves as a nice people. One who does normal things and has friends that like to be around them. This is not the time to reveal poor attitudes.

Later in the conversation, the person is to reveal more of their attitudes. Still, even during this time they need to try to justify these attitudes, because that would be what the person would have done in real life.

These questions are intended to be "starters" for the audience. Your goal is to get the class involved in asking the questions. This may not happen much the first few times you have this exercise, but it will come more natural as time goes by. Eventually you want most of the questions to come from the audience.

There is another option for this activity. You may choose to give the volunteers a few questions a week in advance so they can think about their answers. Of course there is no way to anticipate the questions that will come from the audience, so they must stay in character.

If one of the characters say "I don't know," the entire class say, "THEN MAKE IT UP!" This fun part of the activity is explained in another section.

Make it up! – You may be hesitant to use this part of the activity because you think it would be embarrassing to the person it answering the questions. This is usually not the case because everyone goes into the activity knowing about this possibility. In reality it is a fun part of the exercise and helps people us their imagination rather than claim ignorance. It reminds them that it is alright to tell how they imagine the situation to be.

Interview Question – At the end of each Session One you will be provided a question. Ask for volunteers who are willing to interview someone who is not a part of the group and report back the following week. Preferably it is a person who is respected for the way they live their Christian life.

Be open for the class to provide a better question, one that fits the tone of the discussion that day. We would appreciate you sharing these with us.

Create a Self Evaluation – A self-evaluation is a list of questions that do not have yes or no answers, but offers a range. For instance:

On a scale from 1 to 10, How much do you like summer?

It is a type of "test" that is fun to create, but it is highly recommended that the individual results be kept personal. Each time you created one of these, please share it with those on the website.

Nominations Are Open – This is an activity where your class recognizes someone outside of the class who exhibits a particular character quality. After the character quality has been discussed, ask if anyone knows a person who exemplifies this quality. If possible, settle on one or two people who everyone agrees embodies the principles taught. Decide on a way to honor this person or persons.

Egg Timer – It is important that the class has a good amount of variety. Therefore announce in the beginning session that you will us a timer to limit each report, discussion, storytelling, interview, and skit. Start by making the "egg timer" a fun part of the activity. In the later sessions, it is good to become more lenient by allowing an extra minute when the activity or report is very interesting to the group.

Walk-in – A "walk-in" is a person who you have prescheduled to drop into the class "unexpected," but at a precise time to enhance to discussion at hand. This needs to be a good actor and one who can easily stay in character. Again, don't allow this to take up a large amount of time.

Bumper sticker – This is an activity that is great for concluding the two weeks of activity. This is where the group is trying to sum up what has been learn by the Bible story. We call it a "bumper sticker" because the concluding statement should be five words for less.

Homework for the second week – The homework is not for everyone, but for a few volunteers who are willing to do a little research or preparation before the next class session. It is important that these volunteers know that there reporting time is limited. Not only should they do the research, but they should also think of how they are going to present it in a short amount of time.

Deeper Questions – These are discussion questions that are put at the end of each lesson plans but will not be used by most groups. They are there for that special time when such a discussion would be helpful and not hurtful. They may possibly be given to the class at the very end of the second session of each story. They could then be taken home and used for a person personal journaling.

Planning Ahead – Here are a few activities for upcoming sessions that may require some advance planning:

Story 2 Session 2 – Select a song or chorus about thanksgiving.
One possible chorus would be Come into His Presence
1988 Integrity's Hosanna! Music

Copyright © 2004-2007 [International Learning Solutions]. All rights reserved.