COMMITTEE ON CHRISTIAN EDUCATION FEATURE

One of the greatest joys of ministry is hearing how God is working in the lives of those we serve. A favorite story of mine is from one of the elders at the church where I am a member and children’s director. This elder pulled me aside when he picked up his sweet three-year-old son from Sunday school to share some of the fruit he had seen in his son that week. A few days earlier, his son had bumped his head on the playground. It was a pretty bad bump. The son was crying and trying to pull himself together. Dad, while trying to comfort him, asked, “Why did God make you so tough?” Without missing a beat, the son replied, “For his own glory.” Even in a crisis, that truth he had learned in Sunday School through GCP’s Show Me Jesus toddler curriculum had sunk so deeply into his little heart that it was his very first thought. His parents, along with our team at the church, were faithfully telling him of the Lord’s might and the wonders the Lord has done! (Ps. 78:4)

Serving the Church through Teaching

Growing up as a pastor’s daughter, I was always involved in ministry with my family. My parents faithfully impressed upon us the importance of serving the church as a part of our own spiritual growth. I began helping in the nursery at a young age and teaching children at around twelve. I loved seeing the children’s faces each time some new truth about Jesus clicked for them.

In college, I spent my summers serving at a PCA camp in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. While working as a camp counselor and director, I learned about the Lord’s grace and deep love for me in a way I hadn’t experienced before. The Holy Spirit took my intellectual understanding of the gospel and used the challenges of camp ministry to work it into my heart. When campers returned year after year, I got to hear how the Lord had been working in their lives. I felt that the Lord wanted me to serve children in a vocational capacity.

After pursuing a degree in educational ministries from Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, I taught preschool and ran a crisis pregnancy center for a few years. From 2014 to 2024, I served in local churches, leading children’s ministries. Along the way, my desire to see children and students know Jesus only deepened. In these churches, we used Show Me Jesus and G2R (Genesis to Revelation) as our Sunday morning curriculum. We used So What? for our youth Bible studies. I saw the lasting impact the material had, not only on the children, but on the families and volunteers. I saw how the curriculum built upon the foundations laid in the toddler class. In our fourth and fifth grade class, students were able to understand the timeline of biblical history, and our teens learned how to study the Bible themselves and apply it to life.

Through the children’s ministry conferences I attended as a director, I got to know B.A. Snider. She was at every children’s ministry event, representing GCP and offering training and encouragement to those of us in the trenches. B.A. asked me to help run the booth at a few conferences. I learned more about the rich history of GCP and the curriculum that I had loved for so many years.

My first time at a booth, I asked B.A. what key points I should communicate to potential customers. I was shocked when the first one she listed was that GCP is a Bible-based curriculum! I quickly discovered—sadly—in our current age, a Sunday school curriculum based on Scripture is a rarity and something that makes ours beautifully distinct.

What’s New at GCP

In 2024, B.A. asked me to start praying about the possibility of joining the team at GCP. The Lord was providing means for growth that the staff and the board had been prayerfully preparing for. In May 2025, I moved to Suwanee, Georgia, to work full time as the discipleship engagement coordinator, taking on many of B.A.’s marketing responsibilities to free her up to shift her focus and launch a new regional trainer program.

The regional training program allows us to reach more churches with in-person, high-quality training about GCP’s curriculum. B.A. and our new trainers will provide in-person workshops on how to teach, what makes Show Me Jesus unique, and how to reach children with the gospel in an age-appropriate way. These training events can be tailored to the needs of the churches involved and reach multiple churches in a geographic area.

Since the training and marketing roles are now split, I have more time to invest in digital marketing than previously possible. We increased our presence on social media and expanded to new platforms. Moving to a new website in January extended our online reach. New customers are finding us through searches and even AI. Another exciting development is our new logo and a new look. Our team worked hard to choose something that looks updated and connects with new customers while reflecting our values and honoring our long tradition and history.

I am grateful for the opportunity to share with churches and families the curriculum and resources that I have loved for years. More than that, I am grateful to know that every Show Me Jesus and G2R lesson, every So What? Bible study for youth, every First Catechism—all point children and their teachers to Christ.  The men and women who built and grew Great Commission Publications over the years have labored diligently so that we might, through the Lord’s faithfulness, tell the next generation of the glorious deeds of the Lord. I am blessed to play a small role in carrying on their legacy of faith, by God’s grace.

The author is discipleship engagement coordinator for Great Commission Publications.