Cornerstones as a Talent-Based Curriculum

Cornerstones is a talent-based curriculum. What does that mean? It means that when inviting people to teach Sunday School, you can look beyond the pool of the traditional folks who are always willing to teach. For example, in our Noah’s Ark: Where in the World workshop, the class creates a flood. One traditional teacher told me, “Forget that! I don’t know anything about creating floods.” And yet, when leading a teacher training in Portsmouth, VA, I got three volunteers when I suggested that a civil engineer might enjoy teaching that workshop.

Another example is in the Wandering in the Wilderness: Bible Improv lesson. When I was at Glenview UMC, I invited a carpenter to lead the class in making a biblically proportioned Ark of the Covenant. He wasn’t comfortable with the teaching aspect, so I invited a veteran Sunday School teacher to lead the Bible study. They made quite a team.

When asking yourself “Who would be a good fit for this particular workshop?” use the following talent-based overviews for suggestions on what talent might enhance the lesson.

Talent-Based Overviews - Printer friendly PDFs

Witness to God's Presence Year Talent-Based Overviews
Covenant Year Talent-Based Overviews
Messiah Year Talent-Based Overviews
Quest for Identity, Word of God and Test of Faith available soon

Our hope is that you won’t be intimidated by thinking that you must find those talents to have a successful program. We are simply trying to give you the tools to expand the pool of people you can invite to pass on the faith to the next generation. With the choice of eleven workshops for each unit, you won’t be stuck with a workshop where you can’t find the right teacher. Indeed, Cornerstones is the only curriculum that offers the flexibility to select exactly which workshops you want to run.

This talent-based approach is facilitated by the way that Cornerstones delivers curriculum. Once a lesson is downloaded from the Cornerstones CD onto your computer, you’ll notice that it is a Word document that can edited. You can customize Cornerstones lessons to reinforce the theology of your own congregation/denomination and to highlight upcoming events. You email the lesson to the teachers, encouraging them to add their own talents and creative ideas. They print out the lesson the way they want to teach it. It’s a custom fit.

Every conversation becomes an invitation. Put together a small team of people who will start to talk to people about their talents, hobbies and careers. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to invite people to teach in a workshop and how often they say yes to passing the faith onto the next generation. Also see Talent Showcase for additional help with your program.