When I was growing up, we had a wonderful pastor's wife who was very gifted in teaching children. In fact, her expertise was in using a felt board to teach Bible stories to us. She was amazing. I had never experienced these stories like I did when Mary Dieker was teaching them to me. In our digital age of multi-sensory learning the use of felt boards has fallen out of style. But I have found using these tools of a bygone era can be effective in today's culture. They are seen as a novelty by today's children who have never heard of or seen a felt board.
One of the reasons I love the felt boards Mary Dieker used is they are how I learned the great stories of Jesus when I was a young boy. Stories like the calling of the disciples, lowering a lame man through the roof, Peter walking on the water, and Jesus feeding the 5,000 are all stories that still speak to me today. These are often known as children’s stories, but the messages of these narratives are anything but simplistic. These are stories with significant theological meaning. We will explore the stories of Jesus and we will move from a 2-D image of Jesus on the felt board to a 3-D experience of his life.
