Welcome to Sensory Bible Stories!

 Welcome to Sensory Bible Stories! My name is Helen and I live in North London. I’ve been working with children, teenagers and young adults with autism and learning disabilities for 10+ years, I’ve been listening to and learning about the story of the gospel for 30+ years! I’ve been challenged in the last few years to find ways to share the wonderful good news of the gospel with children and young people with additional needs. I run a small group at my church in (St James Muswell Hill) for children and young people with additional needs who have taught me so much about how to experience the gospel in a tangible way.

Anecdotally it seems that children with additional needs, particularly those with a diagnosis of a learning disability and/or autism, are under-represented in the Church in the UK. It's difficult to find statistics to back this up (if anyone has any please let me know) but to give some context there are approximately 351,000 children living in the UK with a learning disability (https://www.mencap.org.uk/learning-disability-explained/research-and-statistics/children-research-and-statistics, accessed December 2020) and 1 in 100 people are on the autism spectrum (https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/what-is-autism accessed December 2020). Its likely that this picture doesn't fit with our experience of an average church service or children's ministry session or in 2020 a church's event for children on zoom. Maybe we've never met a child or young person with one of these diagnoses. It can be disconcerting to wonder where they are and why they aren't more visible in our church families. Those who are non-verbal or find it difficult to access conventional teaching seem to be the children whom churches feel the least confident about reaching. Christians often tell me that they would love to share the gospel with these children but they have no idea where to start. The aim of this blog is to share simple templates of sensory Bible stories. These stories have multi-sensory elements and activities such as music, craft and messy play. I've tried to use resources which churches or families are likely to have already and have tried to keep the stories short but saturated with gospel truths. My hope is that these templates along with other tips and resources will enable churches to feel equipped and enthusiastic to share the gospel with all the children in their community. I also hope that families might feel able to share these stories with their children at home especially in a season where it might be difficult to leave the house and go to Church in person.

Our sensory story for this month was about Christmas, of course! We played with nativity animals in a sensory tray filled with porridge and thought about how Jesus is Immanuel, God come to be with us in our mess. The more that December 2020 has rolled on with its new restrictions and challenges the more relevant this has become for me. See below for a template of this story and I hope that you find it useful for sharing the joy and reassurance of the Christmas story. Do say 'hello' in the comments or share your experiences, I'd love to connect with you. Happy Christmas!

A Sensory Christmas Story


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