ChristWise: Leader's Guide for Juniors, Teens, and Youth

Here's a Review I wrote for the Student Jr. book.

I started a baptismal class at my local sda school using Christwise for Jrs. It's well-written, fairly easy to understand, with a great concept: Disciple kids into being able to give Bible-studies by marking their Bibles. (I've used a marked Bible for years and have had some training in how to structure and give studies)

Each study starts with a story, and it has suggested activities in the teacher's guide. I love the fact that it adds studies that may not traditionally be in most sda studies, like Trinity and Great Controversy.

Further, it's fairly complete--not merely a couple quick lessons without a lot of meat.

However, I would NOT recommend this until the following problems are solved.

The problems I have with it are largely with the main reason I bought it in the first place: Bible Marking

1. There is no listing of the bible-study topics in the Leader's Guide. (minor, but frustrating)

2. There is No explanation of where the author is going with the Bible-marking Texts. In the Study on Salvation it is difficult (for instance), to figure out which key thoughts should be emphasized. ie. Is this text telling us our natural condition (lostness), or emphasizing transformation, the role of the Spirit? Where is the author leading us?
Choosing bible marking texts can be subjective, but it can be positively baffling trying to ascertain why on earth the author chose a certain passage or how it fits into this particular portion of the study!!

3. Missing key texts: For instance, it omits the one text that state that the Holy Spirit is a personal being and God (Acts 5:1-5) or that He has feelings (Eph 4:30). It also omits two traditional bottom-line texts on Salvation (All have sinned…..Rom 3:23, Wages of sin is death, Rom 6:23)

4. It's impossible to do everything in one study in an hour with a group. Literally all I can do is have students read opening story and mark their Bibles. And we don't usually get done with that--and that's without the students writing in their own words the meaning of the texts.

5. There isn't enough room to write an entire summary of each text. A solution would be to be take a more inductive approach where the author has a question in bold that would direct the student to the key points in the text. (would help with #2 above and a student could even write the question in the margin next to the text.)

It's my belief that ChristWise could be the best study-guide out there for baptism for Jrs if the above problems were addressed.