Speaking to the audience

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

Presenting the faith in ways that inform and speak to various cultures has always been a challenge for the church.

There are some new efforts to do that - two of them through educational video and computer games.

Classroom Jeopardy! Catholic Edition - developed in cooperation with the makers of the award-winning television show - is available from the Pflaum Publishing Group (www.pflaum.com/jeopardy). Gospel Champions, a new series of educational computer games based on the Gospel, came from a partnership of Catholic publisher Silver Burdett Ginn Religion with Third Day Games (www.GospelChampions.com).

For the non-video approach, Catholic Digest, a national monthly magazine, has produced a 24-page booklet for third- through seventh-graders on life in Nazareth 2,000 years ago. If I Grew Up in Nazareth ... Take a Trip Back to the Time of Mary, Joseph and Jesus includes an interactive account of the life of the young Mary, packed with activities and crafts, vocabulary words related to the faith and educational writing exercises (1-800-321-0411 or www.catholicdigest.com/nativity).

It's good to see modern educators continue Jesus' model of teaching in ways that appealed to his audience.