I recently attended a women's retreat at our church.  The speaker was absolutely incredible and the topic that she spoke on was titled "A Case of Mistaken Identity".  I was so inspired by what she shared that I took all of my materials home and turned it into a 'Bible Mystery' for my cute little 'super slueths' to solve!

My kiddos and I are so enjoying the study and so I thought you all might enjoy it too.  It might make a great middle of the year break from your regular studies  or even a great summer Bible class for you.

To introduce the study I told the kids that I needed some really good detectives because we had a tough case to solve. I told them that the case involved mistaken identity.  We looked up the words mistaken and identity and discussed exactly what that means. I further explained that our case was a very serious one because their had been deceipt involved - someone had actually lied about the identity of someone else.

We then looked up John 8:44 and discussed who the father of all lies is?

Ye are of [your] father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

I asked the kids why Satan lies to us?

We looked up John 10:10

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have [it] more abundantly.

I had the kids make a t-chart with the titles ‘Satan’s Goals’ and ‘Jesus’ Goals’ and fill it in based on what this verse tells us.

Next I told the kids that every good detective asks themselves lots of questions and so we needed to think about every question we need answered in order to solve this case.  I had them make a sunburst chart with the 5Ws and H questions all stemming out from the center.  They had a blast thinking of all the important questions they needed to know as they filled out the chart.

So this was the introduction to the class and I will stop here for now. In my next post I will share the questions we came up with and I will begin to give some of the details of the case in answer to these questions.