Dr. Burk Parsons
Appearances
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Our kids are being bombarded with new definitions of words, entirely new explanations of Scripture. What we need is careful, simple, thorough, accessible, and trustworthy curriculum that parents can easily use in instructing their children through the great stories and teachings of Scripture.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
The one is for our Reformed Baptist students and one curriculum for the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed students. students among us. So I'm very grateful for that because I think it'll serve both churches and traditions well. Another aspect of this curriculum is that it will be thorough.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
While it's not going through every chapter of every book of the Bible, what it does is it covers the main themes and the main teachings and the big stories of the Bible and helps to teach through practical application and the theological understanding of those stories and teachings. And so we also hope this will be very affordable.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Rather than churches having to spend tremendous amounts of money each and every year, the hope is that churches will be able to buy this once and use it, rather than having to buy a new curriculum each and every year. And so there are many other features, but those are just a few to answer your question, Nathan.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Absolutely, Nathan, and it's great to be with you and with all of our ministry partners. I was actually a ministry partner before coming on the staff of Ligonier many years ago, and I've gotten to know many of you over the years, and it's been a great delight to form the friendships that we have at conferences and other places, and especially in times like this when everything is so expensive.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
that you as partners are continuing to remain faithful. And it tells me that you understand what is primary, what matters most in this life as we strive to, as Chris said, fulfill the Great Commission and give God the glory as He builds His kingdom. So this is a wonderful time together, and I'm grateful that we have to talk about this new curriculum.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
It's something that we've been planning and discussing for many years. In fact, Chris, you and I both talked about this with Dr. Sproul many years ago. And I remember that when we discussed it with him, this idea of a children's curriculum, he was very excited.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Because in his ministry in life, of course, he has devoted tremendous amount of time to ministering to children, from his children's books to some of the youth series he's done. This is a pressing need, and I would even suggest a growing need.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
in the church and for families, because it has become increasingly difficult to find trustworthy material that parents and teachers, both in the church and Sunday school, at home and family worship and homeschooling, can use that they can count on.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Because today, our kids are being bombarded with new definitions of words, entirely new and fresh explanations of Scripture, and what we need is careful, simple, thorough, accessible, and trustworthy curriculum that parents can easily use in instructing their children through the great stories and teachings of Scripture. And so I'm very excited about this curriculum.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
It's been something we've been developing for quite some time now. As you all know, at Ligonier, we do not rush anything. We work very hard to take our time and to do the research and to do all the necessary investigative work to produce materials that we believe will be on the shelves of Christians and churches for decades and decades to come, should our Lord tarry.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And we certainly hope he does not. But these resources, we believe, will truly help the church and to help the next generation. You know, a lot of Christians I speak with are very concerned about the future, the future of their nations, the future of their churches. and the future of what is going to happen.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And one of the things that we need to be constantly doing is teaching our children, training them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, making sure they understand the right definitions of words and terms. And the only way they're going to do that is if they are grounded well in the Word of God and the theology of the Word of God. And that's what this curriculum aims to do.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
I know Chris is very excited about this curriculum as well. It's something we've been discussing and talking about, all of us together, Nathan, JD, planning for really quite some time along with the entire editorial team. And so I am very excited. I know Chris is very excited about this as well.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Well, one of the things that's very important, and when we did our initial research several years ago, and we looked at every curriculum that we could find, every Sunday school curriculum, every children's curriculum that was used in homes and Bible studies and homeschooling families, we looked at everything.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And together with Thomas Brewer, who really has done the initial bulk of the work on this, who leads editorial, we found that most of the curriculum was complicated. It took a lot of work to use. It took a lot of time to even prepare to use the curriculum. It wasn't simple. And so one of the features of this curriculum is that it's simple.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Any parent, any teacher can pick this up and will be able to use it to go through the lesson and teach it to children. We also believe that this curriculum will prove itself to be far more trustworthy than a lot of the curricula that we're seeing out there these days.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Whether you realize it or not, a lot of the curricula that is sort of slipping into churches and Sunday school programs, there are a lot of themes that are also creeping in. sociocultural themes and even biblical theological themes that most of us are unaware of and would disagree with. And they're slipping in slightly at times, but as we know how things often do, they begin to snowball in time.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And so we want a curriculum that is trustworthy and that doesn't change every year. a curriculum that families can count on and they know that the theology in it is something that they can trust because it's based on our ancient creeds and confessions. And thankfully, there are two versions of this curriculum that are planning to be released.