A Cognitive-Semantic Engagement with a Biblical Text in Religious Education and Youth Ministry: Designing Exercises to Initiate a Narrative Dialogue

Searching for new methods to initiate a narrative dialogue in secondary school classrooms, cognitive semantics is used. The purpose is to create more openness to a biblical text in order that students will actually enter into a narrative dialogue with the story. The text chosen is Genesis 1:1-2:3. A sequence of exercises is developed. This study focusses on two, namely ‘mystery’ and ‘essay’. Through the ‘mystery’ exercise, students experience that if they know more about the time and culture in which the story was written down, they gain a better understanding of the text and more sympathy (for its meaning). By means of writing an essay, students enter into a dialogue with the story. Several higher order thinking skills are reached by doing the exercises. The paper concludes by elaborating the exercises to enable Youth ministry to initiate a narrative dialogue to enhance Religious Education.