Sunday school teachers don’t have it easy. They surrender an hour each weekend to wrangle children, mop up snacks, and take prayer requests for dead cats.

As if that’s not enough, they’re asked to explain some of the most challenging stories from Scripture. They have to make sense of talking animals, natural disasters, and a confusing cast of characters that includes angels and giants, slaves and concubines, judges and kings.

In previous generations, many Sunday school teachers simplified these stories by turning them into morality tales. They encouraged children to be obedient like Noah and brave like Daniel. More recently, Sunday school curricula have pivoted from this approach. Instead, they prefer to read Old Testament characters typologically, showing how they point to Christ.

While this is a welcome development, it raises some concerns. In spotlighting the Christ-centered nature of the Old Testament, have we forgotten the formative nature of these narratives? Have we lost our biblical heroes?

In an “Old School Lesson for New Sunday School Teachers,” Joe Carter says we shouldn’t completely discard the old approach. Instead, he offers five principles for teaching Bible stories that both point to Christ and present moral examples. As he argues, “Seeing Jesus on every page of Scripture doesn’t preclude us from learning moral and practical wisdom from these accounts.”