Word. World. Way.

The Purpose

Welcome to the W3 adventure. Join us in a journey to gain core knowledge of the Bible, God’s word. The goal of W3 is to help families work together to improve their Bible literacy. In the Bible God shares His Story. It is His word to us put into the context of the world He created and the people and places He used and will continue to use to accomplish His purposes.

W3 will help families gain understanding of God’s great story by learning, memorizing, and sharing God’s Word, God’s World, and God’s Way – W3.   Consider the W3 experience as a time to build pegs on a peg board on which Christians of all ages can then hang deeper spiritual truths. The Bible will become more approachable as families become familiar with the people, places, and events found in its pages.

Christians can more clearly understand God’s overarching plan of creation, redemption, and return, when they understand the chronological story of God’s people. Our goal is for W3 to help families begin to build those pegs on which hang the stories of the gospel.

The Plan

W3 is a flexible program designed to be used as a stand-alone mid-week program, as a supplement to community fellowship groups, by individual families, or as a whole church initiative. It is geared toward families with children from kindergarten to sixth grade but can be used by people of all ages. Core Biblical information is divided into a three-year chronological cycle with seventeen lessons per year.

The program easily fits into a traditional school year between Labor Day and Memorial Day spreading each lesson over two weeks. W3 provides accountability through the W3 handbook as students and parents work through the tasks and have them checked off by a small group leader or accountability partner.  Each lesson is divided into three parts; God’s word, God’s world, and God’s way.

The goal is for W3’ers to have their handbook completely checked off and become a Master of each cycle over a three-year period. The three year cycle will include Cycle 1: Creation through the Judges, Cycle 2: The Kings through the birth of Christ, Cycle 3: Christ’s Ministry through Revelation.

The Picture

For a picture of how W3 can be implemented consider these suggestions.

Mid-week program

W3 can be partnered with existing community groups. Every other week parents and children could gather as a whole church for an hour W3 program. Twenty minutes could be designated for introducing the featured Biblical figure and singing the timeline. During the remaining time, kids could be split into small age appropriate groups to complete the storytelling, geography work, and memory work. Parents would attend the groups with their children possibly altering groups each week to attend with multiple children.   On the off week parents could attend community groups and a childcare program could be developed with games and crafts based on the W3 lesson.

Community group integration

W3 could be integrated into the community group evening. The first 20 minutes of community group could include the entire family with community members singing the memory work together and checking off each other’s handbooks for the God’s world and God’s way sections. In this scenario most of the God’s word reading and story retelling would have to be completed at home. However, one child and one adult could be chosen to retell the story each week to receive encouragement from the community group and practice verbalizing their faith in a group. 

Whole church initiative

A church could incorporate this program into existing Sunday morning programs. A small portion of the Sunday school time could be used for W3 with the advantage that families would all be working on the same portions of scripture at the same time. As mentioned, W3 correlates to the True Curriculum by David C Cook, but could be adapted to other programs.

Family Devotions

W3 could be a part of family devotions. Parents and children could be each other’s accountability partners to check off the material in the handbook.

Our Part

W3 does not claim to include everything a Christian needs to know or to be a complete guide to help a Christian mature. It is true that growing in Christ through Biblical understanding is more than memorization and reciting Bible events.  However, compare the experience of a master gardener when visiting a botanical garden to that of a summer tourist.

The tourist, viewing the gardens as a quick respite from the summer heat, strolls through the gardens quickly glancing at the variety of plants with little knowledge of what he is viewing. His eyes might rest on a particular piece of greenery and take an interest in its uniqueness and beauty. However, he has no appreciation for why this greenery has been placed in this particular atrium or how it contributes to the overall ecosystem of the botanical gardens.  

A master gardener soaks in the garden having memorized the names of many of the plants, having knowledge of how one family of plants relates to another, having studied unique qualities of each variety, and appreciating the entire ecosystem of the garden.  The master gardener can fully experience the garden because he is familiar with its contents . Our prayer is that W 3 will help your family move from experiencing the Bible as a summer tourists to digging into the Bible as a master gardener.