Tips for Evaluating Bible or Sunday School Curriculum

It is essential that curriculum enhance the teaching of the Bible, not obscure it. Teachers must take care to ask if the curriculum is actually teaching the Word of God or simply seeking to meet the objectives of a curriculum writer.

To teach content without reference to the student's need for personal response is not teaching the Bible in a way consistent with its nature and purpose.

A good curriculum will teach what the passage teaches and will call for responses that are rooted in the text of Scripture...It's easy to set up our rules of conduct and then to find passages that seem to indicate some biblical support. But this isn't teaching the Bible. It's teaching a legalism that can become crushing. Such teaching obscures, for teacher and learner alike, the God who reveals Himself, and who demands not conformity to a code, but response to a Person, a life lived not in cold conformity, but in willing and flexible response to God the Spirit.

Questions to ask:

1. Does the material gain attention and draw the learner to the subject being addressed?

2. Does the material present solid biblical content and explore the central principle of the passage accurately?

3. Does the curriculum reflect an awareness of the gaps that block response to God?

4. Are the lesson aims clearly stated and life-response oriented?

5. Do the aims exhibit a structure that leads into the Word, explores the Word, and guides students to explore relevance and plan response?

Taken from Creative Bible Teaching by L. Richards & G. Bredfeldt