One of my projects that I’ve been picking at is coming up with a seven year teaching plan for the Sunday morning student ministry program at my church.  I’m excited about it, but it’s taking a bit more time than I’ve had lately!  I’m hoping to have it wrapped up in the next week or so, though.  The broad overview is that I see it have three focuses to it.  Each year will see us spending a significant portion of the year working our way through the Bible.  At the moment, this is looking like it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 weeks a year.  If I’ve worked it out right, this will enable us to complete an overview of the entire Bible with kids if they go through our entire 6th-12th grade program.  Besides being a priority to me, it also resonates strongly with one of our church’s goals of improving Biblical literacy in a culture where that is lacking.

We would also spend 11 weeks a year on core issues; these would things that are essentials and that I really think are key for kids to have hammered home before they go off to college.  It would be a balance between the essentials in our purpose statement (the series we’ve actually just wrapped up) and critical spiritual disciplines.

Finally, it’s looking like we’ll have 17 weeks left for age specific issues and topical lessons, as well as special guests, events, etc.

I’m excited because once I finish laying it all out on paper, I’ll begin to really be able to communicate to parents, teens and leaders exactly where we’re going, how our lessons fit in to the bigger picture and still have freedom to rearrange the calendar somewhat as different needs or opportunities arise.  I think the biggest challenge from my end is that I have the Bible divided up into the 168 sections to cover it in seven years, which I can plan lessons from … but I’d like to find curriculum resources to make it easier on leaders that end up with some of those weeks.