Object Lessons

Woman’s Day was turned into Object Day in our home. Malene and Given, our friend and KIMI leader, spend the morning making new props to be used while teaching children.

The curriculums we provide for our leaders are build on “object lessons”, where objects known to the children in the natural are used to explain spiritual concepts. We believe objects are a crucial part of how children learn, understand and remember the lesson.

… with limited ressources

But what do you do, when you live in a village with no toy lamb? No “invisible God model”? No costumes? Our leaders often ask those questions and struggle to find objects for their lessons. God has created all of us with creativity and with the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us, we have all we need to be creative. That is normally our answer, yet we felt to take up the challenge to prove ourselves right.

Confidence in Your Own Creativity

So we’ve been making props based on the simple rule “No buying, anything from the cupboard”. Instead af buying ressources we’ve created them out of bottles, shampoo containers, old socks, a pillow, empty toilet paper rolls and lots of cereal boxes. The final objects will be on display at our annual leadership conference in April, where we want to make all objects needed for each of our curriculum. We don’t expect our leaders to do them exactly like we did, but we hope to give them enough confidence in their own creativity to go home and tranform what’s in their cupboards to objects used for understanding deeper truths about God.

Part of a Bigger Project

This little exercise is birthed out of a larger writing project. Malene is re-writing some of the KIMI curriculums at the moment. KIMI has some very great ressources, that we highly recommend, but we do also realise that they were written for people in Western cultures, and do not always fit with the context of developing nations.

Build around the main lessons from the original curriculum, objects are being replaced, each lesson is split into several lessons and bible stories and God encounters being added. We want to make it easy for children in this culture to understand and grasp, so that the many children in our PowerClubs are being taught the word of God, encounter God and grow in their relationship with Him, and are being trained and equipped for a supernatural walk with God.

Conference Coming Up

Deadline is our annual leadership conference for Kids in Ministry Zambia - 18th-22nd April. A lot of preparation goes into this event, as this is the highlight of the KIMI year. This is the time when all leaders and helpers get together to encourage each other, strengthen relationship, focus on the vision and inspire each other to take the children in our PowerClubs deeper and further. We are expecting people from the far corners of our nation as well as a couple of people from other African nations.

So, we have a busy month ahead of us as we prepare practical details, teachings, objects, curriculums - and mostly, as we carry this in prayer. We trust that God wants to touch all our leaders afresh and send them home with new passion and joy. For those of you who pray for us, we would be grateful for your prayers in this month of preparation and during the time of our conference. Thanks!