{"id":5550,"date":"2014-04-09T16:29:53","date_gmt":"2014-04-09T21:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ywupdate\/?p=5550"},"modified":"2014-04-23T19:11:30","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T00:11:30","slug":"be-creative-with-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ywupdate\/2014\/04\/09\/be-creative-with-teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Creative with Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Check out\u00a0this brilliant blog post from\u00a0Jim Murphy, Youth Pastor at\u00a0Evangelical Covenant Church of Bemidji.<\/em><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong><\/strong>I love to use\u00a0<a title=\"Mnemonics\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mnemonic\" target=\"_blank\">mnemonics<\/a>! 4 words that start with C. The first letter of each word in a sentence or series of points that form an acronym. A 3 line limerick that\u2019s easy to recite. They\u2019re all great. As long as I don\u2019t force the passage out of context or make it too corny, mnemonics are all good. I also love using visual metaphors and being creative with the room or stage design. Even using\u00a0<a title=\"Stock Photography\" href=\"http:\/\/www.istockphoto.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">iStockPhoto<\/a>\u00a0or services like\u00a0<a title=\"Graceway Media\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gracewaymedia.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gracewaymedia.com<\/a>\u00a0for graphics are helpful. We show a lot of short \u201cmini-movies\u201d on different topics to serve as lesson hooks, discussion starters, illustrations, etc. We find most of ours at\u00a0<a title=\"Worship House Media\" href=\"http:\/\/www.worshiphousemedia.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Worship House Media<\/a>. But most recently we\u2019ve really enjoyed using video student stories related to different topics from\u00a0<a title=\"Bluefish TV\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bluefish.tv\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bluefish TV<\/a>\u00a0through\u00a0<a title=\"Rightnow Media\" href=\"http:\/\/rightnowmedia.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rightnow Media<\/a>. I also really like to use lesson re-enforcing hands-on activities in small groups or little games during large group. Unfortunately, these are much more difficult to put together and orchestrate\u2026especially for large numbers of students. That\u2019s probably why you don\u2019t see this kind of thing much in large youth groups.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My favorite use of creativity in teaching isn\u2019t really gimmick or any sort of special tool. It\u2019s actually just telling the biblical story. But not like talking about the story where you say \u201cI want to tell you about a story in the bible.\u201d Or just explaining the story where you just talk about the things that were happening in the background. Rather, you tell the story as if you\u2019re in the story yourself\u2026you\u2019re one of the persons in the story telling the story. Or maybe not as one of the characters but at least telling it in such a way that it feels like you\u2019re right in the middle of the story. Start with the first sentence being one that grabs their attention and then go back and tell the story leading back to that opening statement. Try experimenting with the various\u00a0<a title=\"Modes of Narration\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Narrative_mode\" target=\"_blank\">modes of narration<\/a>, you know like 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person. I just recently heard Pastor Chris Brown of\u00a0<a title=\"North Coast Church\" href=\"http:\/\/www.northcoastchurch.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">North Coast Church<\/a>\u00a0employ this kind of creativity in his sermon at our denomination\u2019s annual conference called Midwinter. Check out his website called\u00a0<a title=\"Stories that Teach from Pastor Chris Brown\" href=\"http:\/\/www.storiesthatteach.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">StoriesThatTeach.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Jim Murphy<br \/>\nPastor of Student Life<br \/>\nCovenant Church, Bemidji<\/p>\n<p>Visit Jim&#8217;s blog <a href=\"http:\/\/onthegrowingedge.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-report-this\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ywupdate?moderation_action=report_form&#038;object_type=post&#038;object_id=5550&#038;width=250&#038;height=300\" class=\"thickbox\" title=\"Report This Post\">Report This Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Check out\u00a0this brilliant blog post from\u00a0Jim Murphy, Youth Pastor at\u00a0Evangelical Covenant Church of Bemidji. I love to use\u00a0mnemonics! 4 words that start with C. The first letter of each word in a sentence or series of points that form an acronym. A 3 line limerick that\u2019s easy to recite. They\u2019re all great. As long as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,4369],"tags":[14852,17952],"class_list":["post-5550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflection","category-web-resource","tag-youth-ministry","tag-youth-workers"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Be Creative with Teaching - ECC | Youth Worker Update<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/ywupdate\/2014\/04\/09\/be-creative-with-teaching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Be Creative with Teaching - ECC | Youth Worker Update\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Check out\u00a0this brilliant blog post from\u00a0Jim Murphy, Youth Pastor at\u00a0Evangelical Covenant Church of Bemidji. I love to use\u00a0mnemonics! 4 words that start with C. The first letter of each word in a sentence or series of points that form an acronym. A 3 line limerick that\u2019s easy to recite. They\u2019re all great. 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