CEF’s Teacher Training Programs
CEF places heavy emphasis on teacher training. Through multiple courses of training, CEF trains
teachers to deliver the “Wordless Book” and weave its themes into every Bible lesson. The repetitive
and intensive training desensitizes teachers to the darkness and severity of their message, to the point
where teachers learn to easily recite the “dark heart” script with a bare minimum of conscious
attachment.
CEF’s headquarters in Warrenton, Missouri, hosts a campus, the Children’s Ministry Institute (CMI), that
offers diplomas for completing a 12 week, 8-course, program in child evangelism. Completion of this
program is required for all CEF state and local directors as well as all full-time ministry staff. CMI has
graduated over 4,500 students at its US location since its 1945 founding.
CMI’s program includes two “Teaching Children Effectively” (TCE) courses. All paid Good News Club teachers, whether or
not they seek a CMI diploma, must complete the TCE courses, either on campus,
online, or “at one of over 280 extension sites” — i.e., local CEF chapters —
“across the United States.” Unpaid volunteers are also strongly encouraged to
take at least the first TCE course, and must at a minimum attend shorter
training sessions.
Reflecting the dark gospel emphasis of the Good News Club, the Syllabus for the 30-
hour TCE Level 1 course states that “Attention is focused on the lostness of the child
without Christ” and that “[s]pecial emphasis is placed on methods of evangelism, such
as the Wordless Book and the evangelistic Bible lesson.”
To graduate from the course, a teacher-in-training must pass tests that evaluate their
“effectiveness” in presenting an “evangelistic Bible lesson” (45%), the “Wordless Book”
(40%), and a visualized memory verse (15%). The Grading Guide
for the “Wordless Book” programs the teacher-in-training to emphasize each concept of sin,
punishment, and atonement represented by the “Wordless Book.”
With respect to mentioning “sin,” CEF
specifically trains volunteers to “make it
personal,” evaluating teachers on their effectiveness in getting
children to internalize a sense of inherent and pervasive
sinfulness, lostness, and worthiness of punishment.
Excerpt from a CEF training manual
for teenage volunteers
“The Bible says our hearts are dark with sin,” [CEF instructor Miss Carolyn] says in a singsong voice, demonstrating
how we might grab and hold the attention of a young audience. “Anything you can think or say or do that goes
against the laws of God that makes him unhappy. Even a little baby is a sinner. Within a few minutes of being born,
he’s squalling and crying, because he wants his way. Punishment for sin is to be separated from God forever.”
I’ve heard this all before, in exactly the same words—the squalling baby, the “separation from God forever”—from
Deborah, the auburn-haired mother teaching a CEF class at the Missions Fest in Seattle. It’s like hearing a comedy
routine for the second time. There isn’t an ounce of spontanaeity in the program’s curriculum. Everything is
scripted, down to the last punch line.
Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, p. 235 (2012)
© Intrinsic Dignity
