I’ve heard it said that the only thing in children’s ministry that is harder to change than curriculum is your security and check-in system.

1. What place does the Holy Spirit receive? It’s been said that a church has 90 minutes a week (that’s assuming a child comes every week, which is an anomaly these days), and parents have approximately 90 hours each week (minus sleep/work/school) to invest in kids. But let’s not forget that the Holy Spirit is with us 24/7 (168 hours each week). He can speak to a child at school, while sleeping, or through the Scriptures. When we help kids know, trust, and discern the voice of the Holy Spirit, we are helping to equip them for life. If your curriculum does not teach a child who the Holy Spirit is and provide time for a child to hear and respond, you are missing the chief partner in disciple-making.
2. What doctrine is conveyed over time? I can get away with eating a bacon double cheeseburger and a chocolate cupcake every now and then. But if I create a steady diet of these high fat, high cholesterol foods, I’m in a world of hurt down the road. The same is true for your lessons. If your curriculum creates a steady diet absent of the doctrine and theology of the Bible, then you will end up with spiritually anemic followers of Christ. Make sure you understand the background of the writers of the curriculum.
3. How does it rank the importance of parents? Parents must be positioned as carrying the primary responsibility for the spiritual development of their child. We call this Spiritual Parenting. Consider doing the following exercise: Get a group of leaders in the room and ask the following question: “If I truly believed that parents can and should carry the responsibility of spiritual development, what would ministry look like?” Then capture all of the possible answers on the whiteboard. Does the curriculum you use help you fill in any gaps you find? Are parents considered a partner, or are they truly the primary leader in spiritual development?
4. What is the focus of each lesson? At the risk of sounding like a broken record from so many other posts, the Bible is not a book of stories about dead people. The Bible is a collection of stories about God, His desire to be in relationship with mankind, and His pursuit of us from the Garden of Eden through today and into the future. It’s His story. It’s still being written. And when we read it and teach it, we should always learn more about Him and our response to Him than we should learn about the supporting actors.
5. Does it reinforce a relational approach to Scripture? Our view of Scripture makes a significant impact on our view of God. If we perceive the Bible as a list of rules, then we often see God primarily as a judge watching for when we mess up. But if we view it relationally—that there is a God in heaven who wants a relationship with us—then there is a greater chance that we will understand Him through the context of love, forgiveness, grace, blessing, and favor. When we have a relational view of Scripture, it not only impacts our view of God, but it also changes how we relate to the rest of mankind.

At the Assemblies of God/My Healthy Church office, we’ve spent a lot of time creating and curating curriculum content. If the items listed above resonate with you as being key components for the ministry experience you want to create, I hope you’ll carve out time to review Tru Fire. In my opinion, it does the best job of adequately answering these five questions and more.

My friend Alycia has developed this simple scoring method as a tool to help you evaluate your curriculum. You’ll see some of the same kinds of questions are included in her tool. Feel free to customize it to include everything that is important to you.