With the increased numbers of immigrants and refugees coming to North America, churches are looking for ways to reach them. Several of these churches have found Clear and Simple Media material to be a helpful tool to do that. Churches are using our books, especially Simple Stories, in English Classes, to attract and reach these newcomers to their community. Because this is an increasingly popular outreach tool, we decided to provide additional material to help churches get started in an English teaching outreach.

Simple Stories tells 32 stories from the Bible using a simple English vocabulary. The stories were selected to give the reader an overall picture of the Bible’s story – “from the beginning to the new beginning.” The original printing of the book included several appendices that contain suggestions on how to use the book for a small group study and how to use the stories to teach English. But we felt that we needed to do more.

With that in mind, we commissioned Bethany Stephens, a professional ESL instructor, to select six of the stories from the Simple Stories book. She was asked to write English language lessons based on the stories. We are pleased to announce that those lessons were completed and are available for the first time this week.

The manual covers six of the stories from the book and makes lesson plans for each story. The exercises include vocabulary, pronunciation, word recognition, comprehension, and elementary writing skills. While the manual does not cover all of the stories in the book, it provides a template that will allow teachers to craft lessons for the remaining stories easily. There are also a set of “helpful hints” for first time English teachers.

We hope to see many churches develop an interest in creating ministries to reach their new neighbors for Christ. We hope that this new manual is a tool to help them do just that.