5 Ways to Fuel Your DVD-Driven Curriculum

by Joy Emery

Can a DVD-driven curriculum do all that is needed to teach students? While some leaders may think so, a DVD cannot engage in conversation with students. Your presence and guidance must be coupled with a DVD curriculum to lead students to life change.

If you have searched for a DVD-driven curriculum and have finally found FUEL, don't let your search stop there. You must continue to refine your skills as a Bible-study leader to learn how to team-teach with a DVD-driven curriculum. Here are five ways you can fuel and strengthen your students' experiences with a DVD-driven curriculum.

1. Know your equipment. Chances are that you have been in a classroom, teaching session, seminar, or similar event in which a presenter is ready to present only to find out that a cable is missing, a battery is dead, or the electrical socket is not powered. Your students will experience the same "this-is-a-waste-of-time" thought pattern if you are not prepared. Does this mean that you have to be a computer genius - No! But it does mean that you may want a "tech-no-know-it-all" along for the ride to help you be prepared for tech disasters.

2. Preview the entire session. Using a DVD-driven curriculum doesn't mean that you first experience the material at the same time your students do. As you preview, do so with a pen and paper in hand. As you hear "key" phrases, write those down. You need to hear the message, understand where the session is carrying the students, and then be able to use what you have heard to begin to strengthen your role as you guide students in discussion.

3. Personally wrestle with the truth of the session. Did you think that a DVD-driven curriculum would take you off the hook? That you would be able to sit back, enjoy an entertaining clip or two, and then go out for pizza? As a Bible study leader, you must first wrestle with the truth yourself before you can lead students to see how the Bible study addresses their life needs. The earlier you start in the week, the more life experiences you will encounter that you might can use to strengthen your teaching experience.

4. Engage students in conversation. Students are much more likely to initiate life change if they are guided to talk about how Bible study passages apply to their unique life situations. This is where you are more valuable than the DVD alone. A DVD can't hear students' concerns, answer students' questions, and challenge students to specific life change based on what they have expressed after viewing a DVD-driven curriculum. Take the powerful technological tool and merge it with the Holy Spirit working in you, to lead your students to discuss, wrestle with, and ultimately determine to live in ways that are pleasing to God.

5. Continue the experience. Use clips from the DVD to follow up at another meeting. Ask students to pick out a clip that was meaningful for them during the study and to use it to set up how God worked in their lives through a certain life example, a certain quote, or a certain testimony. While the clips may be powerful alone, they are supercharged when wed to a student's testimony of how God was at work in their lives.

As you and your students experience a life fueled with change due to the Holy Spirit at work through FUEL, let us know and hear both your testimony and your students' testimonies.

Joy Emery is a former student minister and now serves as the Student Ministry Internet Producer for LifeWay.com.