Excerpt From The Interview

We’re going to teach them the Bible, and specifically we’re going to have a gospel centrality as we teach the Bible. We’ve partnered with a Sunday school curriculum called The Gospel Project. It’s produced by Lifeway. We tend to start with elementary school kids, and so we will take kids through the entire Bible over five years. So they’ll start in first grade in Genesis. By the time they’re done in fifth grade, they’ve finished Revelation. Every lesson we have a three-fold focus that we call the head, heart, and hands. 

For the head, we just ask the question, ‘What does the story say? What’s the information on the page of the Bible?’ For the heart, we then take a step back and we say, ‘Okay, how does this story connect to the bigger picture story of the gospel? How does this point to Jesus?’ We’re talking about Jesus and the gospel every single week. And then finally hands, we’re asking, How do we understand this correctly, this passage and the gospel in light of that? How’s our character transformed? How are our actions transformed?’ Kids get that head, heart, hands approach every single week through their entire education.

About Joel Penton

A former defensive tackle and national champion for the perennial powerhouse Ohio State Buckeyes, where he earned the Danny Wuerffel Trophy (otherwise known as the humanitarian Heisman), Joel Penton is the author of three books and the founder and CEO of LifeWise Academy—a groundbreaking program providing Bible education to students in over 100 public schools, during school hours, across the country. A widely sought-after speaker, over 1,000 live audiences and a million people have taken in his message. He currently resides in Columbus, Ohio with his wife, Bethany, and their five children.

Links Mentioned: 

LifeWise Academy

During School Hours by Joel Penton

Watch the highlights  and full version of this interview on our Youtube channel.

For more inContext interviews, click here.