A Basic Lesson Plan

My plan is pretty basic. I'm going to briefly recap the story of Joshua and Jericho, since we kind of sped through it last time and it's somewhat relevant to my lesson, and then I'm going to have the children read the scriptural passages that tell the story of Gideon and the Midianites. The basic story is that the Lord called Gideon to free the Israelites from the Midianites, Gideon got an army together, and the Lord had Gideon reduce the army from 32,000 to 300, so they'd have to rely on the Lord, which they did, and they won miraculously. Of the several lessons we could draw from this story, we'll probably cover the importance of trusting the Lord, despite how different His methods are from ours. We may also want to touch on the importance of avoiding pride, since that's the main, stated reason why God wanted to reduce the Israelitish army.

The only problem I'm seeing with this plan is that it may be a little bit too basic. We're mostly going to be reading the story and discussing the lessons we can learn from it. Considering that I'm teaching a bunch of children, I should probably find a way to make this more engaging. Of course, I can put some showmanship into the reading and use questions to encourage the children to put themselves in Gideon's shoes, but I should do something more. There's an Enrichment Activity in the lesson that looks decent (and isn't just more reading and discussion), so I'll probably do that, but even so, the lesson seems a bit basic.

But what's wrong with that? The story is interesting enough that it can probably carry the students' interest, and if it end up being a simple lesson, so be it. As long as the children learn something, that's all that matters. Lessons don't need to be elaborate to be effective. Yes, they should be memorable, and I will have to try to make the story and the lessons memorable, but a message doesn't need to be complex to accomplish that. In fact, sometimes simplicity helps make a lesson memorable. So, yeah, my lesson this week is pretty basic, but if I teach it right, that might be a good thing.