Welcome to a brand new series here on Dad in the Middle. We’re calling it “Dabbling in Doctrine.” For the last few years, I have been slowly compiling a dictionary of doctrine and theology written for kids and teens. It is still a work in process. I hope to complete it some day and make it available for public use, but in the meantime I thought I would pick some of the terms out of the list of 500+ items and explore them a little bit more here on Dad in the Middle.
One of my greatest joys in working with kids is teaching them about the deeper things of God. The purpose of this series is to introduce kids, and teens, to the idea of doctrine and theological terms in way that you can use on Sunday mornings or with your own kids any day of the week. While we will do a little more than just dabble, this series is not meant to be an exhaustive look at each term. If your kids are interested in doing that, kudos to you, and give me a call! I want to know your secret!
Each entry in this series might look a little bit different as we seek to find ways to make difficult concepts and terminology accessible and memorable to kids and teens. Each entry will include the term we are exploring and what I hope is a kid friendly (but by no means “dumbed down”) definition of that term. Where applicable, we will also explore selected scriptures related to the term we are defining and additional scriptures if you want to dig deeper on your own. For some terms, we will talk about why it is important to understand the idea and even offer some ideas on how to help kids understand the topic better. I welcome you leave comments with your own ideas for helping kids to understand the word or to let me know where there are issues with the definition presented.
As you’re working through these terms, you may find your kids (and maybe even yourself) struggling to retain some of the terminology (what is exegesis again?). Whenever I teach difficult terminology, I always tell my kids the same thing,
“It doesn’t matter whether or not you remember the word itself. It’s the concept that is important.”
If you have to choose between remembering the word “Atonement” or understanding that Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, I would pick the latter.
So, make sure you check back tomorrow as we kick off Dabbling in Doctrine by defining the term…….Doctrine (could we really start anywhere else?).