As I taught RE in school I found greatest understanding came when I looked at the subject from the point of view of emotions, exploring the children’s feelings about things they understood. The Trinity is a good example: the feeling of a Father/Mother figure and how they as a child relate this to their own experience/s; The Son as a teacher and how he teaches us to live our lives for good; The Holy Spirit and developing that feeling that somebody or something is with us all the time to guide us, be friends with us, inside us even in our loneliest of times.

As a teacher and taking assemblies I used to find that as I told a story hidden meanings would come to the fore. As I taught stories from the Bible and tried to make them relevant to the children, so I saw a new depth of meaning that wasn’t immediately obvious. And that many of the stories from the Bible have a mythical meaning and as you unlock the story in todays environment they take on a fresh understanding ie., The Story of Daniel does it self a disservice if it is taught from the point of view of overcoming lions. This for many children is difficult to believe, but it does becomes believable when looked at from the point of view of facing up to hardship, not giving in and overcoming seemedly insurpassable hurdles. There are many stories in the Bible that for me have taken on fresh meaning when looked at from the point of view of a Teacher/pupil standpoint that is driven by modern educational thinking.

I see so many people around me that are good in this world and they are not always Christian in belief, Ghandi is the perfect example and from these people we can learn so much. Janet, my wife went on a visit to a Mosque with her children from a Church Of England School and both herself and her children commented on the values held by their faith, by how much they could teach us in the way we live our lives but also how similar they were in their faith perspectives.

I could ramble much more but will leave it there.

Charlie

Sorry that you have had a problem with this! I have downloaded the file from the link that you should have received and am attaching it in an email.

In order for me to check what went wrong, may I ask how far you got before you encountered the problem?

The file is a PDF file which is a common format and most computers will open it without problem. If you still have issues then it may be that you have not got Adobe reader installed, you can download it at http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/reader.html

Again, sorry. If you have any further issue with this or any questions don’t hesitate to get back to me.

Rod

I also bought the ‘The Hotel Inspector’.

Thank you for your ministry in providing scripts to get the gospel across in a different and thought provoking way.

Hilary Taylor
Ashford Common Baptist Church (near Heathrow).

I read through your blog entry and saw you answer to the question what salvation by Christ means to you:

It was salvation from the shadows, from the life I was leading, from life without God.

I can really understand how you end up with your conclusion based on what salvation by Christ means to you. So I would respond with a question: What was Jesus doing on the cross?

I understand your need for Christ and that your life without God was missing the point. And in general I have no problem with that. But that doesn’t really relate to Jesus and the cross; hence the question.