How to Truly Animate Your Christian Bible Group or Youth Group!
For Christian bible group icebreakers, nothing impacted me more than experiencing a large group of young children and some young adults applaud at the end of a screening of ‘The Animated Kids Bible,’ Episode One: ‘Creation’ — from the ‘Genesis six-pack’ — at the Friday night youth meeting.
Pastor Matt Le Claire at our local Parkside Church at Edensor Park, Sydney Australia had asked me to teach a little drama to the youth (which I had done) but what I didn’t know, was that he had kindly planned to screen the premier episode to gauge audience response.
Having been involved for months in the scriptwriting and the overall scriptural integrity of the project with Producer Tom Broadbridge, it was a gratifying experience to see the upbeat audience responses first-hand in a real church setting.
I remember well one sincere little guy who was kneeling at the front, immediately launched into a series of questions like “Hey, when did God create the world?” and “I didn’t know that God created the world!!??” A small number of little discussions immediately fired up across the room debating and deliberating on “how God did it!” And “Where the devil came from!” And it was really very satisfying. I could see that my Pastor friend Matt (the Associate and Youth Pastor at Parkside Church) was quite tickled because the screening of the DVD in the auditorium had really set the tone for his planned Pop Quiz, based on the Genesis Bible account.
When you consider that Parkside Church comprises of people from myriad different cultural, ethnic and social backgrounds who are united as one big family in Christ, the children bore representation of some 45 different cultural and ethnic backgrounds — the use of demographically-sensitive scripting and CGI animation that would satisfy today’s Dreamworks and Nickolodeon generation — the acceptance and yes, even applause from this audience meant a lot! See www.parksidechurch.com.au
But more than that, the kids were exploring — perhaps for the first time — a new and credible explanation for how we got here and the possibility of a world held together by eternal love.
Why not screen ‘The Animated Kids Bible — Episode One: Creation’ at your church, youth group or Bible Study Group? Check at your Christian bookshop for resources from The Animated Kids Bible or order direct online at www.animatedkidsbible.com
