Children's Church Question

I'm preparing lessons for next month's children's church teacher. We're just finishing up the gospels and, by the end of the month, we'll be starting Acts. I write the lessons myself, then find and photocopy colouring pages, and finally I look for illustrations (and this month I'm also going to get the flannel board stuff ready, but usually someone else does that for me). On the last Sunday of each month I get the stuff back from that month's teacher, replace the old lessons with new ones, check supplies, and turn it all over to the next teacher. Then, unless there are problems, I ignore the whole thing for a month (well, sometimes I ask the teacher how things are going, but mostly I can let them handle things themselves).

Today I've been finding illustrations for next month. I have the "Ultimate Bible Picture Collection!" with "8000 royalty-free Bible pictures in 375 folders on DVD" to help me, so it's pretty easy to find whatever we need (although sometimes I need to wade through some bad pictures (like the pictures of God, a lot of wimpy, baby angels, and one where it looks like Jesus is wearing glasses)). Some of the pictures are also freaky and might give my kids nightmares. Still, there's usually something good (although I used a picture from the file labeled "Amos" once for Jeremiah).

When it comes to pictures of Jesus, I have some hesitations. I don't want them getting into their heads, "That's what Jesus looks like," when there's no real way to know, especially since they can go from there to "That's what God looks like," and that can't be right. I actually talked to one of the elders about the problems of using pictures of Jesus. What we agreed was that they already see pictures that claim to be Jesus, so not using them is pointless. It's also very hard to find illustrations for the Gospels that don't have Jesus! What I've been doing (and the elder agrees with this) is using many different pictures of Jesus (the makers of the DVD pulled pictures from a lot of sources, like old story Bibles) so there is no actual "Jesus" being portrayed and they have less chance to form set mental images. So Jesus has different clothes and different hair, he changes sizes, his beard gets longer and shorter....you get the picture.

Here's my question: I use three different pictures that obviously came from three different sources for the lesson about the Road to Emmaus. Do you think the kids will notice that not only is Jesus different in every picture, but so are the two men?

Language and Evolution

The point to evolution is that we are getting better, more improved, more complex in our thinking and doing. People (and cultures) start off primative and move up from there.

Language is said to work the same way. We started off with noises, then words, then complex means of communication.

Except: the most complex languages are found in the most primitive tribes. Our language is very simple compared to theirs.

Anyone want to explain that?