Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.
Greetings!
You may find in some of my past articles where I have shared how our congregation has taken a priority in seeing that our teachers have supplies and equipment to help them easily teach the Bible to the children.
Well, in all honesty, we really had outgrown our resource space for props and class materials and choices needed to be made. An interesting problem to have but a problem nonetheless, especially when visual aids are stacked and piled so you cannot decipher what is available to you.
Early this summer we had somewhat of a disaster
on our hands at our church’s building.
You know that little song from Winnie the Pooh…
The Rain, Rain, Rain (Came Down, Down, Down).
Well, the rain, rain, rain DID come down, down, down!
Right through the walls into offices, classrooms, storage areas, etc.
It was a REAL mess!!
Where is the blessing in all of this? Well before the blessing(s) was discovered, it got even worse.
Not only had we lost many books and several teaching props, there was also a lot of yucky mold found. We were sorry it was there but glad it was discovered so it could be dealt with!
But hold on it wasn’t over.
As a few of us were sorting through bins of Bible class props and such that had been moved from the flood area, deciding which items could stay and which had to go, we also decided to begin going through our resource room that had had not been effected by the flood but was in much need of organization!!
An AMAZING opportunity as we were already in the groove of clearing out and cleaning.
At this time if you would have entered our resource room you would have found a large supply of Bible class visual aids on shelves or tucked away in wooden slots, but also many things in that room of which had been piled and stuffed, heaps upon heaps! Some old some new. Some things that had been donated, and were thoughtful, but again we only had so much space to work with. Then there were those things that, who knows why they had ever landed in that room to begin with.
Someone has to do it!
Resource/education rooms over the years have a way of piling up unless someone with teaching experience and organization skills takes on the decision of out with the old, in with the new and saving what’s good and useful!”
The old is not always bad, but at some point pictures/games/posters/wall décor that are damaged or out of date, or if you find they are not scriptural, should definitely be pitched! If it is a useful idea but damaged, you may want to create a new visual aid from the old one.
Well, these someone’s were a sister in Christ and myself.
The first day we happily worked. I went home and sort of had a wheeze. I didn’t think too much of it seeing we had stirred up quite a bit of dust.
The second day I was going through some shelves and found lots of mouse droppings. I thought, “Yuck! And wow, this has really needed to be cleaned!” I went on working not thinking about it too much just really glad it was getting done.
We had many Bible class posters and pictures stacked from the floor up about a foot and a half deep and when I began going through them I found our little furry friends had left their trademark in them as well! We ended up losing many good visual aids that could have been used had they been properly cared for. I had not even known some of what we had until I went through the pile!
While I was in the hall going through these things, our education minister began pulling out an old shelf he was going to replace with a better one and what was found next was sickening. Piles of mouse droppings that must have been there for years! Who knew? When an occasional mouse was trapped or died, no one thought about needing to clean behind and under the selves.
The third day I was sick at home and ended up going to the Doctor.
Our education minister suited up in face mask, plastic suit, shoe covers, and gloves and began a deep cleaning process of the whole room! He not only found the bones from old mice, but a nice, big, fat, dead one!
Were these things blessings in disguise?
YES!!
It all began with the flood that made all our hearts sink, then the cleaning of that spurred us on to eventually begin going through our resource room, that helped us find the mice and the mess they left behind. Which began the real sorting and cleaning! Without those things “helping” us along I wonder how long it would have taken us to act and think seriously about how the blessing of Bible class materials should be stored and dealt with properly. We now have a good start on some much needed improvements!
It is so worth the time, effort, and money to keep our education rooms clean, organized and filled with great visual aids!
It’s great to have a clean, better organized,
useful space on it’s way!
Now we can begin the more detailed sorting and organizing of the good materials!
As I was down in TX this summer helping with a new granddaughter, (Esther Rose, #5!!), we worshipped with the Village Creek congregation in Arlington TX where my son and his wife work and worship, and I had the pleasure of visiting their Bible Teacher resource room and got some great improvement ideas to help us back home!
Ideas I really liked and wanted to share with you!
- A poster storage table/shelf. Option 2 , option 3 , option 4 for poster storage!
- Metal shelving (scroll through the pictures on the site to see the complete shelf) with nice large storage bags.
- A long plastic tote for bulletin board edging.
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