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CURRENTLY IN CURRICULUM
New adult Bible study curriculum to emphasize MB distinctives


For the past 100 years, Mennonite Brethren in North America have used Bible study outlines and lessons produced by other publishers, adapting the lessons in most cases with a study guide to reflect their distinctives. Now that is changing.

Next fall, Kindred Productions, the publishing arm of the General MB Conference, will introduce the first Mennonite Brethren adult Bible study curriculum for use in Sunday school classes and by small groups. Word Wise, a five-year Bible study curriculum, will include all seven genres of biblical literature.

Michael Dick, project manager and executive director of the Board of Resource Ministries that oversees Kindred, says the new curriculum will be uniquely MB in a number of areas.

The materials will emphasize points at which Scripture speaks to the MB Confession of Faith and MB core values. “When the text supports or brings out our distinctives, we want the writer to bring that out,” says Dick.

Dick says that because the centrality of Christ is an anabaptist distinctive, each year the curriculum will include a study of one of the gospels. The first book to be studied will be the Gospel of Mark. The curriculum will also emphasize salvation history and Bible-based spiritual formation.

The 28 books of the Bible to be studied were selected this summer by the project development team. MB Bible scholars will outline each unit, and the lessons will be written by MB pastors. This approach combines the expertise of scholars with the practical experience of pastors, says Dick. Philip Wiebe, a freelance writer, is the Word Wise editor.

Pastors and Christian education workers will have an opportunity to preview the material this spring when samples will be mailed to each church.

The Word Wise format combines the student and teacher’s guide into one book. The teacher’s guide will offer a number of teaching options so teachers can use a traditional lecture method or a more interactive approach.

“Our goal is to have enough material in the guide so that leaders can come at the lesson in different ways,” says Dick. “We want this to be a bridge between generations.”

The material will not be dated so it can be conveniently used at any time. While the material will be presented in 13 sessions, the leader’s guide will also offer suggestions on ways to combine lessons to accommodate other than a quarterly time frame.

Efforts to publish MB Sunday school curricula emphasizing denominational distinctives have taken their share of unexpected turns over the years.

As early as 1900, MB “editors” were appointed to adapt the International Sunday School Lessons into German for use by MB churches. Plans to produce scripturally oriented lessons by leaders of the conference were delayed in 1924, and the Sunday School Committee was formed instead with the charge to oversee the ISSL lessons and to provide alternatives when the lessons were inadequate. In 1939, delegates to the General MB Conference convention approved a recommendation that English-language lessons based on the ISSL plan be written by MBs for three age levels.

Then, in 1958, the US MB Conference Board of Sunday Schools and Related Activities initiated discussions with their Canadian counterpart and representatives from the General Conference Mennonite Church and Mennonite Church for the purpose of developing anabaptist curriculum for children and adults. A survey at the time showed MB churches purchased their Sunday school curriculum from 15 different publishing houses. One long-time Sunday School Committee member said much of the curriculum would have “seemed questionable to the fathers and founders of the MB Church”.

Support for the inter-Mennonite curriculum plan shifted in 1961 when the Sunday school board recommended that churches use Scripture Press Sunday school materials. An arrangement with SP gave MBs access to the SP ISSL lesson outlines with no exchange of royalties. This meant MBs could produce their own study guide alongside the SP material.

That agreement was honoured until David C. Cook, which purchased Scripture Press, decided to discontinue publication of the SP curriculum line and replace it with two new lines.

Kindred considered three options: endorsing the SP line as is; inserting an MB teacher’s guide; or fully customizing DCC/SP material to emphasize MB distinctives and core values.

“As we (Board of Resource Ministries) considered our options, there was a growing enthusiasm for launching a new Bible study series that would be Mennonite Brethren,” says Dick. “We had been asking for a couple of years – Do we need our own adult stand-alone material? What gave us the impetus was when David C. Cook pulled the curriculum line we’d been a part of for 30 years.”

Development of the new adult curriculum was approved by BRM at the April 1999 board meeting, and the project development team met in June to put together a plan. The debut of Word Wise was scheduled to coincide with the discontinuation of the SP line in September 2000. However, in January 1999, DCC decided to discontinue the SP curriculum line a year ahead of schedule, leaving BRM hanging.

To provide congregations with denominational curriculum prior to Word Wise and to complete the 10-year SP cycle through the Bible, BRM decided to publish the MB Study Guide for one more year. The study guide’s format was changed to emulate the SP format and includes more of a study guide for the leader.

During the past 10 years, efforts to provide uniquely MB curricula have moved ahead significantly. Today Kindred Productions offers alternatives to run-of-the-mill evangelical curricula for every age group: Jubilee: God’s Good News is a cooperative anabaptist curriculum venture for children; Fast Lane and Generation Why? are inter-Mennonite curricula for junior high and senior high youth; and the Faith Family Focus series is a topical study of MB core values offering a high school and adult track.  – Connie Faber, Christian Leader

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Last modified January 11, 2000.

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