Last week, Phil Vischer was a guest on the Focus on the Family Daily Broadcast with Jim Daly, Dr. Juli Slattery and John Fuller. Phil discussed how to teach kids about Easter, as well as talked about What’s in the Bible? and parenting through the different stages of a child’s life.
You can listen to the full broadcast here.
Here are some of our favorite moments from the broadcast:
On Easter
“You had a debt you couldn’t pay and Jesus paid it for you. And that’s what we’re celebrating. So, you focus on the celebration. To move away from the secular view of Easter, I think one important point is to celebrate the whole week. Celebrate Holy Week.”
“Easter is the Super Bowl of Christian holidays, not Christmas. So, I think the first step is to put Christmas back in its place and say, “Hey, Jesus was born. Isn’t that wonderful? What does that point us towards?” It points towards Easter. Now you’re thinking of Easter all through the year.”
“That’s one of the things I don’t like about in when we turn holidays into huge productions, is that it implies that all of this meaning is confined to a certain day of the year and we’re not living in it. You know, we need to be steeped in Easter. We’re in the soup of Easter, you know.”
“We don’t go to Easter to learn about Jesus. We go to Easter to celebrate what we know already. “
On Teaching Kids of Different Ages
Jim Daly: When you look at it for your own kids, I mean, when you look at age 5, what do you really want them to understand? At age 10, what should they be grasping?
Phil Vischer: At 5, I think Resurrection Eggs are actually a really good tool, because you take something they enjoy, coloring eggs and the notion of eggs and bring the story of Jesus out of it. There are also tools like The Jesus Storybook Bible, which is a version of the Bible that points to how Jesus is the subtext behind every story. It’s an amazing little Bible storybook that’s become very popular. Those are the things you start with kids when they’re 5, tools that use things they like–picture books, eggs–to bring the story of Jesus out in a very kid-friendly way.
When you’re 10, you’re ready to look at images of the cross. So, you can actually start to feed ’em. As you get into grade school, as you get towards 10, we need to think, okay, why isn’t the world the way you would like it to be? Why isn’t school the way you would like it to be? Why are you having conflicts with your friends? Why does nothing seem to work the way you would like it to work? Let’s talk about sin. And sin is something that is in all of us and ruins our relationships and makes everything harder and we can’t be with God, because He’s holy and we’re not. He’s perfect and we’re not. He’s got a standard that’s way up here and no matter what kind of gym shoes we have on, we can’t jump that high. We can’t meet God where He is. And that’s where you’re telling the Gospel. That’s where you’re presenting the Gospel. So, for an 8-, 9-, 10-year-old, which is why with What’s in the Bible?, which is geared for that age kids, we’re really hitting the Gospel.
Did you listen to the broadcast? What were some of your favorite moments?
