Ministry Idea: Bible Brick Club

For this post, I am switching gears a little and sharing a ministry idea I have pursued with my church that helps young people understand God’s Word better by helping them visualize the world of the Bible. I know from my own experience growing up that many children (and even some adults like myself) struggle to learn through traditional, book-oriented resources often used in Bible classes and Sunday Schools. They would much rather being doing something active or watching a video, and this is not a bad thing, though it presents challenges for learning. To reach kids like this better and help them understand the world of the Bible, I have started what I call Bible Brick Club at our church for kids ages 8 to 12. We meet for 90 minutes and spend the first 20 minutes or so learning about a new Bible passage and the context in which it took place. I show them on a projector pictures of places and objects connected with the passage, such as the city of Jerusalem during New Testament times and pictures of what the Temple probably looked like. Then we spend most of the rest of the time working together to recreate the scene with LEGOs (or any LEGO-compatible bricks). I think it has proven to be very fun and effective for learning, as long as you are willing to have Jar Jar Binks show up in Jerusalem now and then or for characters to be mining gold on the backside of the Mount of Olives. For one of our projects, we spent three sessions building a replica of Jerusalem, complete with pools where Jesus performed miracles, the Garden of Gethsemane, and Golgotha. Each time we met we reviewed what happened at each place we had built so far, and this seemed to help cement the stories in their minds. And at the very minimum, the kids seemed to have a good time learning about the Bible at church, which I say is a win all by itself. As far as materials and preparation, the biggest challenge for us was getting enough LEGOs for the group, so I would start early collecting those. We invited donations of used LEGOs, too, but I quickly found out that not many people are willing to part with their own LEGOs! Another spinoff of this idea (though I have not attempted it yet), is to assemble a virtual team of older kids (perhaps ages 12-15) to recreate Bible scenes together using Minecraft. I hope some of you are able to use this idea in your own ministry at church, at school, at community centers, etc. If you do, I would love to hear about it (see my contact info here).