Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone! 2011 marks the launch of our new Bible memorization program. This new program is replacing the Kids 4 Truth (K4T) Bible verses so children will no longer be memorizing and reciting K4T verses in Shine. While we are not using it in Shine, K4T is still available to use as a family as a resource for teaching, devotions, etc.

Why are we switching programs?
This new program was designed to correlate with the lessons the children learn each week through the Generations of Grace curriculum. Each verse (chosen by the pastors and Shine team) emphasizes what the children should know, feel or do as a result of the lesson. This was something that was lacking with the Kids 4 Truth program. It also allows everyone (child, parent and teacher) to focus on the same verse at the same time!

The new program launched Sunday, January 9th during Shine. Each Sunday a new Bible verse will be introduced and can be quoted the following week. Throughout the week we encourage parents to work on these verses as a family with the table stand (one per family) and the flash cards (one per child) we sent home. The flash cards are for the children to use individually AND to bring with them when they say their verse. The table stand is designed to be placed in a visible location in the home (i.e. the kitchen table) to work on as a family. Each card includes the Bible verse as well as the lesson title and passage so they can refer back to what was learned in Shine. We encourage not only to be learning the verses but to process through what the child learned from the lesson.

This program is a work in progress! It’s our goal to continue to develop this program as time goes on. We welcome your feedback! Ladies from the Shine team (Lisa Bakke, Alice Bear, Donna Larson, Liz Nemmers and Lisa Pedersen) will be available on Sunday nights before Shine and after modules to answer any questions.

Looking forward to seeing what God’s going to do through this new program!