One of the ways in which schools have been hardest hit by the coronavirus is the absence of Christian visitors due to health restrictions. But what it has also done is to highlight the huge impact being made by believers in schools up and down the country over recent decades.

A number of ministries, including Bible Society, Scripture Union and Walk Through the Bible, have been investing great efforts to teach the Scriptures to a generation with little or no knowledge of them.

For the most part, they are welcomed by head-teachers because they fulfil the statutory requirements of religious instruction that is broadly Christian, and schools very often do not have staff either capable or willing to do it. Current law requires all state-funded schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to hold daily acts of collective worship. And in schools with no formal religious character, this worship must be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character.¹

And yet the general perception among churches is that schools are closed to the Bible – perhaps in view of the ever-widening reach of secularism – whereas the opposite is true.

Open the Book, founded in Bedfordshire just over 20 years ago and now part of Bible Society, currently reaches a million children with their much-loved interactive presentation. Using the Lion Storyteller Bible, over 18,000 volunteers read and act out famous passages for primary school assemblies and have come to be tremendously popular with pupils.

An incredible privilege

Heading up the work is Alison Clark, who said: “We’ve found that schools really welcome Open the Book because they know they can trust us – that’s why we insist our storytellers stick to the script. It’s an incredible privilege to be able to bring the Bible to life for so many children week by week, and we know we’re sowing seeds that could grow and change their lives. We have so many wonderful testimonies from children about what the stories mean to them.
“We want to grow our teams and expand our work. Our vision is to grow Open the Book so that children in every school have the chance to experience the Bible for themselves.

We know we’re sowing seeds that could grow and change their lives.

“We currently have 18,050 registered storytellers who regularly visit 3,400 primary schools, reaching around 1,000,000 children. Whilst Covid-19 has impacted on the ability of the majority of teams to go into schools this year, the storytellers have shown incredible creativity and are keeping in touch with the children through a variety of means, including recording assemblies and sending them in to schools, sending cards to the children and small thank-you gifts to the teachers, as well as meeting ‘virtually’ at their usual assembly time to pray together. This commitment even in difficult times has seen an increase of 11 new teams registering within the last month.”Children are encouraged to think about the meaning of Jesus death as they hold crosses made from olive wood in Israel.

One Doncaster team have been filming in a suburban garden (while successfully keeping their distance) to ensure pupils are still able to see and hear the story of Mary and Joseph in the run-up to Christmas.

Paul Keeys heads up Walk Through the Bible, teaching a fun and interactive overview of the Bible using hand signs to children aged 9-11 – 700,000 of them since they started over 20 years ago. He said: “Recently there has been a greater willingness to hear a Bible overview in schools than ever before.”

Let the Bible speak for itself

Their five-session Walk Through the Bible teaching courses focus separately on the Old and New Testaments, but the pandemic has almost entirely restricted them to video lessons, which are only currently available for the Old Testament. Nevertheless, on only one wheel as it were, they are reaching 35% more children than at the same time last year.

“Schools are not closed to understanding faith, or the Bible, or Christianity – but are understandably wary of volunteers preaching rather than teaching,” Paul added. It is very important, he said, that those invited into schools from the churches stick to their remit, which in their case is simply teaching what’s in the Bible.

So, like Open the Book, they ‘stick to the script’ and let the Bible speak for itself. “As expressed in Psalm 78, we are simply passing on the stories of what God has done in past generations.”

The work is so popular that schools have to be put on a waiting list.

There is a sense in which they are wary of shouting too loudly about the willingness of schools to receive them for fear of overzealous and unwise Christians muddying the waters. Emphasis on preaching is a serious obstacle as they don’t like to be seen as a recruiting ground for the churches.

The joy of sharing the stories

For me, personally, the wide-eyed wonder in a child’s eyes is something I have witnessed with great joy as I have helped to share the Christmas and Easter narratives over the years. Most of the children have little or no Christian background, but are clearly awestruck by the stories of Jesus, awaiting our arrival with much anticipation.

My involvement has been as a volunteer in a team led by my wife Linda who works for a trust associated with Scripture Union, who oversee such arrangements all over the country. Linda has been teaching Christianity and the Jewish feasts in Doncaster for the past 25 years through RE lessons, assemblies, special projects, Open the Book and Walk Through the Bible. The work is so popular that schools have to be put on a waiting list, and in many cases the teachers benefit as much as the pupils and, by extension, the parents.Wise Men items for the Christian Journey project in Doncaster

Sadly, Covid has put a temporary halt to direct interaction with children, which has been the mainstay of such ministries until now. But heads are still keen for Christian input, especially at such a frightening time for pupils, and are gratefully welcoming the film productions, books and teaching materials being provided instead.

So we’ll let the Bible speak for itself: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” (Prov 22:6)

Endnotes

¹Government source. In practice, there are schools who choose not to follow these rules, and they are not closely scrutinised by Ofsted.