This collection of culturally-relevant, creative drama sketches for student ministry or drama ministries with teens will help the leader introduce Bible topics, from unique perspectives.

This collection of culturally-relevant, creative drama sketches for student ministry or drama ministries with teens will help the leader introduce Bible topics, from unique perspectives.

This collection of culturally-relevant, creative drama sketches for student ministry or drama ministries with teens will help the leader introduce Bible topics, from unique perspectives.

• Provides Tony's time-tested "Seven Steps to Effective Presentation"—skills that are vital for everyone who leads or volunteers in the church. • Includes easy-to-follow tips to help readers gain confidence, improve self-esteem, enhance credibility, and maximize response. • Covers the following ministries of the church: small group, Sunday school, first impressions, outreach, volunteer training, and many more! • Includes a wealth of resources, templates, checklists, and sample exercises.

"I've heard that story a thousand times..." Perhaps it's time for another perspective. Fifteen Bible stories for kids, written from the perspective of lesser or fictional characters. Stories include Jonah and the Whale, Noah and the ark, the birth of Jesus, Esther, David and the Giant, Elijah and the prophets of Baal, the boy with five loaves and two fish, and more.

In Biblical Women and Jewish Daily Life in the Middle Ages, Elisheva Baumgarten examines how medieval Jewish engagement with the Bible--especially in the tellings, retellings, and illustrations of stories of women--offers a window onto aspects of the daily lives and cultural mentalités of Ashkenazic Jews in the High Middle Ages.

What happens to traditional stories when they are retold in another time and cultural context and for a different audience? This first-of-its-kind study discusses Bible stories, classical myths, heroic legends, Arthurian romances, Robin Hood lore, folk tales, 'oriental' tales, and other stories derived from European cultures. One chapter is devoted to various retellings of classics, from Shakespeare to "Wind in the Willows." The authors offer a general theory of what motivates the retelling of stories, and how stories express the aspirations of a society. An important function of stories is to introduce children to a cultural heritage, and to transmit a body of shared allusions and experiences that expresses a society's central values and assumptions. However, the cultural heritage may be modified through a pervasive tendency of retellings to produce socially conservative outcomes because of ethnocentric, androcentric and class-based assumptions in the source stories that persist into retellings. Therefore, some stories, such as classical myths, are particularly resistant to feminist reinterpretations, for example, while other types, such as folktales, are more malleable. In examining such possibilities, the book evaluates the processes of interpretation apparent in retellings. Index included.