Telling stories with your own children

Esther is a Taiwanese doctor and mother of three children. She heard about Bible storytelling when she read the catalogue of the Taiwan publisher, Campus Books and then ordered her own copy of “Telling the Gospel Through Story” (the Chinese translation). She contacted me and asked if their city could host me to lead some seminars. During the weekend three training seminars were arranged.

As Esther and her husband were attending all three seminars I deliberately trained three different stories to give them a strong start (Genesis 3:1-5: Abraham in Genesis 16:1-10; Plague of Hail in Exodus 9:13-28). Their three children, aged two, five and seven, wandered in and out of the training too.

Esther writes, “Last night, I tried to tell the first story (Gen 3) to my boys (aged 5 and 7) before sleeping. Initially, I started the story, but my older son continued and completed the story. I forgot many parts but he remembered and corrected the missing parts. After that we discussed question 1 and 2 and “What did they like about the story? Why? and “What questions did they have?” I was so surprised they raised good questions:

1. The fruit was good for food and able to give us wisdom, it must be very delicious. I would like to try it!
2. Why didn’t they die immediately after eating the fruit?
3. They both ate the fruit and they died. But why should we die? We didn’t eat the fruit!

What a wonderful discussion before sleeping! We are so glad that they can raise questions!

Suggested way to teach children the stories – Eventually encourage them to tell their story at school but if you do this you must tell your story to adults too. Then you can be accountable to each other.