The Gospel Story for Kids is a new church and family curriculum designed to help ground children in the gospel through using Bible stories from Genesis to Revelation, all in the ESV translation. The program is designed by Marty Machowski, a family life pastor at Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania.

This group of resources includes elements for church children’s ministry settings as well as for families:

• The Gospel Story for Kids Sunday school curriculum, which is being rolled out now and is already being used in over 200 churches, includes 156 stories (78 Old Testament and 78 New Testament) as well activities, coloring pages, and Scripture memory verses.
• The Gospel Story Bible is an illustrated children’s storybook Bible that can be used both in the Sunday school classroom and at home.
• Two family-friendly devotionals, Long Story Short and Old Story New, are great for using at home.

The goal of this program is ultimately to teach children the Bible while helping them to catch a glimpse of the gospel in each story. It is designed so that children who begin the program at age three will be able to complete the gospel story from Genesis to Revelation three times by age twelve.

Check out www.GospelStoryforKids.com to learn more about the curriculum, buy existing products, and keep up with news about forthcoming products.

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Now that the Christmas gifts are unwrapped and the toys are assembled (hopefully), you may be thinking about family devotions for the new year. If that’s you, here’s a new book to consider.

Long Story Short is a family devotional designed to take your family through the Old Testament in ten minutes a day, showing how each story points forward to Jesus Christ. Each day’s entry includes Scripture reading, questions to help your kids think about the passage, and suggestions for praying together. For a sample, check out this free PDF of chapter 1, courtesy of New Growth Press.

Author Marty Machowski has six kids and has been a pastor at Covenant Fellowship Church (Glen Mills, PA) since 1988. He currently leads Covenant Fellowship’s children’s ministry. Here’s how he describes the book in the introduction:

Few Christian parents would disagree with the importance of passing on the truth of the gospel to their children, yet we live in a busy world… Just getting all the tasks of the day checked off our list can leave any parent exhausted….

That is where I hope Long Story Short will help. The Bible can seem like a long story, but when you break it down into short devotions, teaching the Bible to your family is easy to do. The goal of this devotional is to, day by day, pass on a clear gospel message showing our children how every story in the Bible points forward or back to the gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s story of salvation….

As you faithfully lead your children through the devotions in this book, don’t just read it as history. It is history, but it is so much more! Lead with expectation that the God of history will visit with your family. Wait and watch to see what God will do! Cling with faith to this hope, that through the gospel proclamation in your home, the Holy Spirit will regenerate the hearts of your children and lead them to faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone!

Long Story Short is available for $14 at our store.

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In lieu of our usual weekly roundup, here’s a list of all the books C.J. Mahaney recommended on his blog this year. If you’re still looking for the perfect gift for a pastor, church planter, or anyone else, one of these may be what you’re looking for. (The books are listed in order from least technical to most technical.)

And if the person you’re shopping for already has all of these, may we suggest a Christmas lawn ornament?

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What Is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert. This book “provides a biblically faithful explanation of the gospel and equips Christians to discern deviations from that glorious message,” as C.J. noted in his endorsement. You can browse a free PDF of chapter 7 at Crossway.org.

Just the Way I Am: God’s Good Design in Disability by Krista Horning, with a foreword by Joni Eareckson Tada. C.J. calls it “a unique and valuable resource for parents and pastors who get asked the honest questions from children with disabilities.”

The Essential Edwards Collection, written and edited by Owen Strachan and Doug Sweeney, with an introduction by John Piper. Contains five volumes, subtitled Lover of God, On Beauty, On Heaven and Hell, On the Good Life, and On True Christianity. C.J.’s endorsement says, “Strachan and Sweeney provide a doorway into the life and teaching of one of the church’s wisest theologians.”

Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus by D.A. Carson. C.J. writes that this book is “destined to serve readers in their appreciation of the gospel as [Carson] expounds on both the death and resurrection of the Savior.”

It Is Well: Expositions on Substitutionary Atonement by Mark Dever and Michael Lawrence. C.J. suggests that it “can provide a pastor with a sermon series on the gospel.”

By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Me by Sinclair Ferguson. C.J. writes that this “book on the gospel of the grace of God is a gem—showing us why we should be amazed by it.”

For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper edited by Sam Storms and Justin Taylor. Twenty-seven essays on theological topics relating to Piper’s life and ministry, most of them from scholars, and a chapter from C.J., who says his chapter was “not written by a scholar, in case you were wondering.”

God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom by Graham Cole. “A wonderful book that explains why God's intention to restore shalom (peace) to his creation requires the death of Christ.” More info available here.

Atonement by various authors, edited by Gabriel N.E. Fluhrer. A compilation of messages delivered over the years at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. As Fluhrer writes, “This is a book about blood and it soaks every page."

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C.J. Mahaney recently contributed a chapter to the book For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper. The publisher generously allowed us to post C.J.’s chapter, “The Pastor and the Trinity,” online for free.

The chapter is an exposition of 2 Corinthians 13:14, an easy-to-ignore passage that Gordon Fee calls “in many ways…the most profound theological moment in the Pauline corpus.” C.J. endeavors to help pastors care for their churches by daily applying the grace of the Savior, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

The chapter is posted in eleven parts on C.J.’s blog, and you can read the whole thing here.

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