Title: Meals with Jesus
By: Ed Drew from Faith in kids
Price: £5.94
Published by and available from: The Good Book Company
Good for: families with children age 5-11 years
Best bit: fun practical activity to go with each Bible story and a ‘get ready for tomorrow section!
Worst bit: There are a few pictures and diagrams, but I’d’ve liked more.
More thoughts:
I love the cover of this book, which helps me open it. Maybe that’s just being a book person, but I think these things are important. If I’m going to use a book regularly it really helps me if it looks nice!
Inside the book has a simple elegant layout, making it easy to read and find the bits you need. I say find the bits as there’s questions for different ages children, and lots of options of different things you can do depending on what works for you family. I really like this as it feels like I’m being encouraged to adapt it, which I know Ed would want.
There are 34 sessions, with four sessions on each meal with Jesus, a theme I love!
There’s a guide for how you could use this during Lent, and the sessions are labelled as ‘days’, however you could use this flexibly, doing one session a week, or doing four sessions in one go if you wanted to.
I like the fact that the Bible passage is in the book, as although I love reading from my own Bible, having the text in the books means one less thing to have to locate before I can get going.
Ed offers a selection of closed and open-ended questions, the closed ones being questions about what happened in the story, which are easy ways to start chatting. The open-ended ones are the ones which will lead to chats and discussions.
He also gives suggestions for prayer (not a prayer to read), more ideas for further discussion and something more for parents. I love this format as it allows families to explore the Bible together in their own way, not assuming parents have time to do both a family devotion time as well as their own (if you do, that’s fab!), and also means families are able to journey together, exploring the same stories and finding a path of faith which connects them as a family.