Bev Paterson knows full well the importance and significance of helping children to question, explore and discover who Jesus is for themselves.
During her childhood, Bev grew up in country NSW where the local Presbyterian church didn’t have the resources to run their own Sunday School. As a result, Bev’s mother engaged the help of correspondence Sunday school to come to their family home where Bev would have lessons with her siblings. Bev considers this time to be critical in “forming solid foundations” for her Christian faith.
Bev has been taking bold steps, just as her mother did, through her life, in helping children to question, explore and discover who Jesus is in a number of ways – helping with SU Beach Missions, serving in church, and for the last fifteen years, teaching scripture (SRE) classes.
Bev’s first experience with SRE was through an itinerant SRE teacher who would come to her school once a year.
“He would teach us Psalm 119:105 every year. ‘Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.’ That was really important to me. That scripture has remained with me to now. We need to know God’s light on our path, to walk God’s way.”
Convicted of the need for solid Christian foundations to be presented to children, in her last few years of work before retirement, Bev worked hard to make ways for her work to be flexible so that she could begin teaching SRE.
“I did all the training which was so helpful in framing how lessons should work and making sure that the quality of what we teach is to a high standard. I also have been to some group training sessions which have been great for learning from other SRE teachers about how we can continue improving.”
Bev reflects on a time where she had some challenging students in her SRE class who were often disruptive and seemingly very disinterested in the lessons.
“I tried to engage with each one, sitting next to them during activity time and talking to them, trying to understand them better, as much as I was able to. In the final week of class for that year, I brought in some Gideon Bibles for the students to look at. In the front of the Gideons there is a whole page or two dedicated to showing you where different topics are covered in the Bible. Where to look when you’re tired, anxious, backsliding, bitter, excited, confused, etc. Many of the students, including the challenging ones, were surprised to see that the Bible had so much to say about life, feelings, and big questions. It was the most focused lesson that we had all year.”
Bev loves being able to teach SRE. She says, “We have this God-given opportunity to talk to kids about Jesus now. We have this opening into the schools now. We don’t know for how much longer and so we should be doing the best we can to help these kids question, explore and discover who Jesus is. We need to grasp it and run with it.”
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