It’s time for another giveaway!
Our dear friend and author, Bekah Moore, has kindly donated a signed copy of her brilliant new book, Bake through the Bible at Christmas
*, which she co-authored with Susie Bentley-Taylor.
Here at Gospel-Centred Parenting, we love thinking about how to share the gospel in the everyday situations of life with our children. This is a great book to help us do this at Christmas, through baking different delicious things that create opportunities to chat with our children about the wonder of the incarnation.
We asked Bekah to tell us a little about the inspiration behind the book…
What inspired you to write Bake through the Bible?
“Back in 2012, my dear friend Susie and I were chatting about how to teach our little boys, Simeon and Joshua, the truths of the Bible. We had both recently read Treasuring God In Our Traditions* by Noël Piper and John Yount’s Everyday Talk*. Both books encouraged us to keep talking about and pointing to Christ in our parenting everyday. Life already felt chaotic (and that was when we had only one child each!) and so we were keen to use things we did anyway to teach our boys about Jesus. For example, talking about all the things we can see that God has made when walking through the park. One thing we both love doing is baking and we’d already started to involve the boys in this. So we began to think about how we could use baking to teach the boys about God and his love for them. And the ideas began to flow…!
How does it work?
Bake Through the Bible* retells 20 key Bible stories that take us through the Bible’s storyline. The stories are written to engage small children, and are each accompanied by a baking activity to draw out and reinforce the teaching from the story. There are pointers and ‘while you cook’ questions to help you talk to your child about the story and God’s love for us while you’re having fun baking.
What if I’m no good at baking?
The baking activities are simple – they’re not designed for The Great British Bake Off contestants! There are a mix of recipes: savoury, sweet, snacks and meals. They are simple, with minimal ingredients and André from The Good Book Company has illustrated the instructions beautifully to help older children to follow them independently. There are even time saving tips (e.g. buying ready-made hot cross buns and icing pens rather than making hot cross buns from scratch). I really emphasise this, because Bake through the Bible isn’t about baking masterpieces with your children: it’s designed to help you to teach them about Jesus while having fun.
We’ve been really encouraged by the feedback we’ve had from Bake through the Bible. It’s been used by parents, grandparents, godparents, as well as in holiday clubs, Sunday clubs, schools and even Nursing Homes. It’s also been given as a gift to many non-Christian families. So in 2014 we wrote the sequel: Bake through the Bible at Christmas. This is the same idea, and the stories take us through the Christmas Story from Isaiah’s description of Jesus being a light in the darkness to Jesus being the best Christmas present because he is our rescuer (John 3.16).
We have varied success with baking in our house! When baking with Simeon, many of the ingredients are consumed raw…! We’ve had burnt, inedible biscuits, flour everywhere except in the bowl, boys walking off after 30 seconds of baking, but much of the time, baking is a lovely, engaging family activity for us.
What recipes are your family favourites?
We love making an empty bread tomb on Easter weekend with Simeon and Francis. We put a toy figure in the tomb and take him away while the boys are sleeping on Saturday night, and they are genuinely amazed and confused about where he has gone – what a joy to tell them that Jesus is not dead, he is risen!
Simeon loves the happy snowman trifle, which illustrates that Simeon and Anna were very happy because they saw Jesus and knew he was the rescuer of the world. Francis currently loves gingerbread, so I’m thinking we might attempt a gingerbread stable next week…”
Bekah lives in Hartlepool with her husband, Nick, and sons Simeon (5) and Francis (3). They are part of All Saints’ Church Stranton, where Nick is curate. She loves the sea, food, Jesus and her family (not in that order!). Nick and Bekah have a third son, Phoenix, who went to be with Jesus shortly after he was born in February this year.
So how can you win a copy?
If you’d like to be in with a chance of winning this brilliant book, then entering is simple. To enter:
Share this post on facebook, and comment on the post on our facebook page to let us know your favourite family Christmas tradition.
You can have an additional entry into the competition for each of the following activities too:
- Like our Facebook Page (if you haven’t already)
- Follow us on Twitter (if you don’t already)
- Tweet this post (make sure you include our handle, @GCParenting so we know you’ve done it!)
- Follow us on Instagram
So that’s up to 5 entries!
The competition will close 48 hours after this post was published, and we’ll announce the winner shortly after that.
If you’re not a parent, then don’t let that put you off – this would make a great gift for another parent, or Sunday School teacher, or it would be great to use when you get to spend some time with children from your church.