Tried-and-tested material developed in a local church context by a biblical scholar

Diddy Disciples is a creative and playful new worship and Bible storytelling resource for babies, toddlers and young children. Diddy Disciples aims to encourage participation, discipleship and leadership from children's earliest years, using storytelling, singing, colour, repetition, art and lots and lots of movement! Peer-learning is actively encouraged with many opportunities for young children to learn from each other. Groups are invited to build their own Diddy Disciples sessions, choosing from different options. Leaders can use the material to create a service to follow the pattern of their church's Sunday worship, a simple midweek baby and toddler singing session, or anything in between! Book 1 includes: Over 20 weeks' worth of fully worked-out sessions organized into 4-6 week units from September to December All the information you need to set up and run Diddy Disciples in your group Plenty of opportunities to tailor the material to your own context, resources and tradition All sorts of creative 'starter ideas' for using everyday art and play resources to sparkchildren's imaginations and engagement as they respond to the biblical stories. The Units are: Jesus' wonderful love: six weeks introducing some of Jesus' most famous parables God the maker: six weeks on creation and caring for it, including a Harvest celebration In November we remember: four weeks including All Saints and Remembrance Sunday Getting ready for baby Jesus: five weeks journeying through Advent to Christmas

Sharon Moughtin-Mumby considers the often unrecognised impact of different approaches to metaphor on readings of the prophtic sexual and marital metaphorical language. She outlines a practical and consciously simplified approach to metaphor, placing strong emphasis on the influence of literary context on metaphorical meaning. Drawing on this approach, she read Hosea 4-14, Jeremiah 2:1-4:4, Isaiah, Ezekiel 16 and 23, and Hosea 1-3 with fresh eyes. Her lucid new readings reveal the way in which scholarship has repeatedly stifled the prophetic metaphorical language by reading it within the 'default contexts' of 'the marriage metaphor' and 'cultic prostitution', which for so many years have been simply assumed. Readers are encouraged instead to read these diverse metaphors and similes within their distinctive literary contexts in which they have the potential to rise vividly to life, provoking the question: how are we to respond to these disquieting, powerful texts in the midst of the Hebrew Bible?