How to reuse your old lessons to make them new

Whenever I have am planning session for new curriculum, lessons and themes for my ministry, there has always been a  tendency for me to look at new and fresh curriculum from publishing companies (i.e. Group, reThink, ym360, etc.).

The reality thought is that you don’t need to spend money on “new” curriculum or lessons. After all, if you have been in ministry for any number of years, you have all the content you will ever need already. It can be found in your “old” curriculum. All you have to do is simply update and recycle some of your older curriculum or lessons.  Here are 4 things you can do with your “old” curriculum to make it effective today.

1. Review and evaluate.  When you find a lesson you want to use again review it and evaluate where you need make changes so you can use it again.
2. Update the illustrations. Sometimes an illustration used in an older message may be outdated now.  So take some time to look for new illustrations or stories you can use to give it a fresh, updated feel.
3. Update the Bible passage.  Just like you stories or illustrations you may want to review and update the verses or passages you use in this lesson.
4. Use them in a different environment. Sometimes simply reusing your older lessons can be done in a different environment.  Say you gave a message on sex and dating to a High School large group last year.  Well, this year you could use the core of that message for your middle school life group.  Take the content you shared and simply adapt it to a smaller audience.

In general you are looking to make your lesson relevant for todays audience.  As stated above, If you have been in ministry a long time the chances are you have great content in an older lesson…it just needs to be updated.

But, in order to reuse your older lessons, you actually need to know where to find them.  Oftentimes I have remembered talking about a subject matter before, but I couldn’t find it.  I just didn’t remember where I placed it.

So how can you make sure you can FIND your older curriculum or lessons?

1. Label effectively. In order to find your old curriculum or lessons you need label it correctly.  Make sure you file them away when you are done so you can easily find them when you are looking up a certain topic.  I create make a folder on my hard drive for curriculum and put them in topic sub-folders.
2. Keep good notes. If you want to use your old notes, you have to have them organized in a way that when you retrieve them, you can remember your train of thought or flow.
3. Keep updated notes on the topic. In order to be relevant to this current age you need to make the old curriculum fresh and new. Even though you lesson was used once upon a time and its over and done with, keep looking for new illustrations and stories centered around that topic so when you do need to update your old lesson you can pull from those stories.

Four ways you can reuse your older lessons or curriculum and three ways to make sure you find them.

What about you? Do you recycle your old content? How do you make it fresh and new so that it is equally effective? Share below or on social media using #ymsidekick to share. 

Also, make sure you sign up for the Sidekick Scoop below to stay current on all other great Student and Family Ministry as well as Church Communication and Social Media content and trends.