Teaching our children Scripture can sometimes be challenging because of words and concepts they don’t yet understand. My friend, Melissa of Hive Resources, is joining me today to share an example of how she helped her preschool class understand a specific passage of Scripture. And she’s included a printable!

How to teach your kids to be intentional for Christ

When I lead the preschoolers at my church, one of my favorite activities is to break apart big words into practical ideas.

In 1 Thess. 1:1-10, Paul is speaking to the church at Thessalonica, praising them for intentionally sharing God’s love with those around them. But ‘intentional’ is a big word for little kids.

⁷ And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. ⁸ The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, ⁹ for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, ¹⁰ and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

After we read 1 Thess. 1:7-10, I asked the kids if they knew what the word ‘intentional’ meant. Not surprisingly, they didn’t.

So, I used this definition: intentional means doing something on purpose. We talked about some of the things we do on purpose - brushing our teeth, sneaking a cookie from the pantry, or putting all our blocks in a row. Those things don’t happen on accident; you do all those things on purpose!

The people in the Thessalonican church were intentional, too! How? They looked for people to share God’s love with.

When we turned back to our passage to see how the believers in Thessalonica were intentional in sharing God’s love, we came up with two examples:

Be intentional by telling others about Jesus.

Because many preschoolers are chatterboxes, they can usually grasp this truth. They love to talk about things they love – TV shows, toys, what they ate for breakfast, and people like Grandparents or friends. We talk about what we love. If we love Jesus, we’ll want to talk about him to others.

Note: If the above passage seems to long for your age group, use 1 Thess. 2:8 as an alternate verse -“Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.”

Be intentional by living like we’ve met Jesus.

For preschoolers, talking about Jesus is the easy part. Teaching children to “live like we’ve met Jesus” is a little harder. When a concept is a more abstract, I love to pull examples immediately out of the text. In vs. 6-10, Paul commends (say ‘good job!’ or ‘way to go!’) the church for the following things:

• Following the Lord (doing what he says)
• Having joy in difficult times (when bad things happen trusting that it’s going to be okay)
• Believing that Jesus is the Son of God (just like he said!)
• Trusting in Jesus more than anything or anyone else (he’s the boss!)
• Letting Jesus change their hearts and minds (letting him help us listen and obey)

The church did such a great job living like Jesus that word began to spread about them. God wants us to “live like we’ve met Jesus” because when others see how we live they will get to know Jesus too!

Hey, teacher! Here are some hands-on ideas for helping your kids grasp the idea of being intentional.

Make special eyeglasses

In order to “live like we’ve met Jesus” and tell others about him, we have to be on the lookout for people to talk to! To help kids intentionally “look” for others to share Christ with, we made our own eyeglasses complete with colored cellophane from this cute template. And while there are many shapes to choose from, I think the heart-shaped glasses drive home the idea that we’re looking for people to share God’s love with.

We printed ours out on cardstock to make them sturdy. To decorate, we colored our glasses with markers, but you could really add some bling with stickers, glitter, or adhesive rhinestones. Because some of our preschoolers haven’t mastered the scissors yet, I precut them.

Spread the good news

If you have extra time, have the children put on their completed glasses and practice greeting one another. I’ve discovered preschoolers particularly enjoy role playing – either acting out a Bible story or specific scenarios. So, ask one child to pretend he is a guest to the class, and let the students take turns meeting and greeting him/her in Christ’s name.

If your class is shy, an idea I found online suggested the teacher wear a sticker and ask the students to keep an eye out for it. Whenever they spot the sticker, they must come up to the teacher and greet him/her.

Missions memory game

Click here for the printable version

For students who aren’t excited by story time or crafts, feel free to use this printable of a memory match game based on this passage. Each icon represents a practical way we can be intentional to show God’s love to others.

Print on heavy cardstock or put stickers on the backside to ensure the game pieces aren’t see-through. Laminate if you want the pieces to last.

As each student takes a turn matching the icons, talk about the meaning of each symbol and how it shows God’s love. After all the pieces have been selected, line them up in rows and challenge the students to pick one idea for serving someone they know in the coming week.

Do you struggle with teaching your child some of Scripture’s abstract concepts? What have you found that works?