We believe the best strategy for transformation is through developing a growing number of “model teachers” around the world. Those children’s workers have five simple characteristics found in Deuteronomy 6:2-10.

A. Relationship
v. 5-6: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give to you today are to upon your hearts.

Ministry to children begins with the teacher’s heart. For teachers to reach children with Christ’s love, they must first be reached by it themselves. Children learn from our example, so modeling is one of the primary aspects of the essential relationship a model teacher has with a child. Relationship is the foundation for their ministry.

Model teachers teach the Bible to children. The truth of scripture is effectively taught not when teachers repeat a traditional story just as they learned it or when they teach straight from the curriculum, but when the Bible itself is studied, read and taught to children.

C. Discussion
v. 7: “Talk about them…”

Many children are taught as if the bible is a collection of stories that have no connection to real life. The teacher tells a story and the children listen. Through open and honest communication model teachers help children understand the scripture as more than a story. They discuss with the children how the bible is connected to their real lives.

D. Experience
v. 7: “…when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

Teaching should be intertwined with what children experience every day. Model teachers create an activity that takes learning past a cognitive exercise and into an actual experience. Children need to experience the feelings connected to the objective of the lesson, because people learn not by talking and hearing but by experiencing.

E. Response
Verse 8: “Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your house and on your gates.”

The word of God should affect what you do with your hands. It should affect how you think with your mind. No child should leave church not knowing how to respond to the word of God in the way they think and what they do with their real lives. Model teachers give children practical opportunities to respond to the word of God.

EGM is committed to developing a growing number of these children’s workers around the world. Through them, we can see God bring hope, grace, forgiveness and new life to children.