Whether it was writing for VeggieTales, or for my new educational series, What's in the Bible?, I've always started with two goals: First, to lead my audience to a new understanding of a spiritual truth. Second, to make my lesson entertaining, or the first goal just isn't going to happen.

This leads to the issue of generating even more "hard-to-please" Christian consumers. ("This Sunday school class isn't as funny as VeggieTales! I'm outta here!") I wish there was an easy answer to this problem, but there isn't. Once upon a time, kids were more than happy to sit around the fire, listening to Pa read aloud from the "Good Book." Of course that was typically after 8-12 hours of hard work in a field or a textile mill. Maybe even a coal mine.

Kids today don't spend eight hours a day in a factory or a coal mine. They spend eight hours a day watching the Disney Channel or playing video games on an Xbox 360. As a result, dryly reading from the "Good Book" seems to have lost its appeal. Hence a talking ...