Drawing Kids to God through Bible Journaling

After deciding to do an Illustrated Faith activity at camp I got really excited to share this newfound way to explore God’s Word with lots of young ladies. I ended up teaching an activity to 7 girls for 5 days and 2 adults joined us. And I ended up doing Illustrated Faith one evening as our evening activity for my 5 high school campers too. They loved it so much that during their cabin time the next 2 days they requested that they could continue. Below I have shared entries the girls did in their Bibles. These ladies ranged in age from 4th grade to 12th grade and each put their own spin on Bible Journaling.  The other cool thing that came from my week of Illustrated Faith was that one of the adults who sat in on the class was so inspired she started to fill the pages of her Bible and even taught the activity the following week unexpectedly!
When I asked them what they learned they said things like….
“God’s Word is not just black and white it is colorful.”
“I learned to find things in my Bible.”
“I learned that God made me creative.”
“God’s Word is creative and beautiful.”
“It’s okay to express myself, and create in my Bible.”

I cannot tell you how rewarding and inspiring it was to share this process with so many young ladies. They asked to take their Bibles with them, were sharing with their staff and other campers. The even requested stacks of post it notes to carry with their Bibles so they could mark pages they wanted to journal from other Bible times at camp like their morning devotion time or small group time each day.

I encourage you to use Illustrated Faith as a means to “Draw Kids to God” – there is even a facebook group (“Drawing Kids to God through Bible Journaling“) that is comprised of adults exploring this with their kids. Hope you check it out!

You will also note that my campers just used regular paperback Bibles – you can journal in any Bible. I didn’t want them to illustrate in their own Bible’s without parental permission and you can see that small margins did not hold them back. One con was that paper was a bit harder to work with and often there was bleeding through the pages that you might not experience with a journaling Bible, the pro to this approach was that they really did not hold back or get nervous because they knew this was their “journaling Bible” – and because kids just have less to hold them back PRAISE THE LORD!

Also I have created a document that has some ideas, links to inspiration, supplies I used to get started and some beginning information if you are interested and just getting started. You can find that in my first post about Illustrated Faith, or here.

As a class we explored ways to find inspiration. I focused on a new way each day and found that there were several key ways we didn’t even really have time to explore – great material for next year!
Monday we used Bible stories as inspiration.
Tuesday we explored the camp theme verse and other “life verses” we love.
Wednesday we talked about music as inspiration – and listened to specific lyrics.
Thursday we explored non-fiction books (devotionals, books about missionaries etc.)
Friday we talked about using Sunday morning (and in our case weeknight campfire) messages to inspire us. I also brought out some resources from our staff manual that were wonderful for the girls. You can find them here. They provided names for Jesus A-Z, topical verses (we talked about how the internet can be a great source like this sheet was) etc.
I would add a day of journaling outside in nature next year, or using a piece of nature to inspire an entry – or even to put in your Bible.

I’d also pull those resources I shared on Friday out sooner – they really gleaned a lot from them and inspired a different kind of journaling.

We also talked about how a person can inspire and entry, how a specific medium and your desire to explore how it works (paint, gelato, colored pencils, a new pen) might inspire an entry, or how a specific material (like for us a green vine washi tape) might lead you to find a related passage for a new entry.

That’s it for now. Hope you were inspired!
 
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