All the tools and content are the same. We created DIG IN so it's affordable for any size church or budget. A large church will spend less per student than a small church, but a smaller ministry will spend less overall.

New programs are typically announced in January and released in June.

Each program is sold separately. You might choose to use multiple programs simultaneously with different age levels or for different purposes. For example, you might use Life of Jesus for Sunday school and The Bible In One Year for a Wednesday evening program.

When you purchase, you pay up front for your first quarter. Every 90 days, your credit card will be automatically charged for the next quarter before it's delivered. You can cancel any time prior to the quarterly billing date. Once you've received all content for a specific program, the billing cycle will stop unless you purchase a different program.

Your quarterly content delivery schedule is based on the original purchase date of your program. So, for example, if you purchase "Digging Into the Life of Jesus" on June 15th, you will have immediate access to Quarter 1 upon purchase. Your next quarter will become available 90 days later on September 15th when your second payment is made and so on until you have paid for all four quarters. You can cancel or reactivate at any time. If you reactivate, your subscription will start with the next available quarter.

No, all four quarters will be delivered in sequence. However, you can edit your delivery schedule to get your next quarter sooner, postpone it to a later date, or cancel your subscription and reactivate it later if desired.

No, once you've paid for a quarter, you have access to that lesson content for 15 months from the original purchase date. Cancelling a subscription just stops the billing cycle so you do not receive any new content until you choose to reactivate.

No, Group's company return policy states that "Products or services that include downloadable content are non-returnable once content has been delivered. All sales are final." However, you may cancel your subscription at any time to avoid future charges.

You can start a program at any time. You'll always begin with Quarter 1 and continue through the scope and sequence. We provide additional holiday lessons for Christmas and Easter for you to drop in to your lesson plan as needed.

Yes. After choosing the activity blocks for a lesson, you will assign a date for that lesson to be taught. When you look at your Published Lessons page, lessons will be displayed in order by date. Since you can start DIG IN at any time of year, additional Christmas, Easter, and Palm Sunday lessons are provided to schedule in whenever needed.

Yes, your license includes permission to print copies of lessons for any number of teachers or helpers within your church as long as they are only used with the number of students specified in your pricing tier.

Page count varies based on how you build each lesson; however, you can estimate about 12-pages of lesson content for an hour of teaching time. If you choose to use class handouts and/or take-home pages, you may decide to print these as well. Remember, you have the option to download lessons to an electronic device for teaching…or you can setup a Staples Advantage account, upload your lessons, and take advantage of highly discounted printing.

DIG IN uses a web browser interface. There's no software to install, so all you need is a PC or Mac connected to the Internet to build and publish lessons. It's easy! And teachers can review and even teach lessons from a computer, tablet, or hard-copy printout.

Downloadable video files are included at no extra charge, but if you prefer to purchase physical DVDs, you may buy them directly from Group.com. There's a separate DVD available for each quarter, so please specify the quarter(s) you need when placing your order.

Before building lessons, you'll start by setting up classrooms. If your church has multiple services, you may want to name a classroom for each service, such as "9 a.m. Grades 1 & 2" so you can tailor each classroom experience to the particular preferences of the teachers or students involved. When creating a classroom, you can name it and choose the classroom format options such as age-graded, one room, or large-group/small-group. Taking this simple step also keeps teachers from accidentally changing another teacher's lesson.

You can create as many classrooms as you desire—it's up to you.

There are three main classroom formats available:

• Choose Age-Graded Classrooms if your ministry has kids in separate classrooms for age-appropriate learning and activities. You may select up to four different age groupings.
• Choose One Room if your ministry has kids of various ages (from Preschool to 6th Grade) together in a single room. This option works well for a children's church, midweek program, or smaller Sunday school program.
• Choose Large-Group/Small-Group to have all elementary-age kids gathered together for a portion of the lesson and then split into small group crews for interactive experiences and deeper discussions.

Completely different activity blocks are created for Preschool and Grades 3&4 (media blocks being an exception). The two activity blocks are then adjusted as needed to be age-appropriate for Grades 1&2 and Grades 5&6. Sometimes, the activities work well for multiple age groups with no edits. Sometimes, changes are made to words, questions, or other elements making the activities more age-appropriate. The result is activities that are often quite similar, and in some cases identical between age groups. Rest assured, lessons are carefully edited to ensure age-appropriateness for each age group.

Also, many years of successful VBS program development have proven that children of different ages can have the same experience and interpret it ways that are meaningful to their age. We know this to be true and leverage it in our DIG IN lessons development. Watch this video to learn more.

Absolutely! The One Room and Large-Group/Small-Group classroom formats work particularly well for children's church, evening, or midweek programs.

Yes. You can download video files (in mp4 format) for use with your preferred presentation software.

Yes, all videos may also be streamed online on our Vimeo account at vimeo.com/digin.

You'll be able to access quarterly lesson content for 15 months (1 year + 1 quarter) from the date of payment. Each quarter will have its own expiration date, shown in the Quarter dropdown within the Lesson Builder screen. You can also check the expiration date for quarterly content on the Account Settings > Subscriptions page.

If you think of a lesson as a recipe, Activity Blocks are the ingredients. Each Activity Block has a specified time duration, and each block is connected to the main lesson point, so everything has a purpose. The most important block is the Core Bible Discovery block because it contains the central Bible story for the lesson. You can mix and match other blocks to add music, crafts, games, and other activities to your lesson to meet your needs for available time and teacher/student preference.

Every lesson offers 11 different activity blocks to mix and match. By default, we include the following blocks in every lesson: Opening, Core Bible Discovery, and Life Application Wrap-Up for a total of 30 minutes. If you choose to include all 11 available blocks, your total lesson time would be 1 hour, 55 minutes.

New Living Translation (NLT)

Once you've built a lesson, you can add it to the list of Published Lessons for teachers to access online.

You can give each teacher his or her own login to view and/or download lesson content from the Published Lessons page. You can also choose whether to give individual teachers permission to build or edit lessons.

You may choose to print hard-copy lessons for your teachers or allow teachers to retrieve their own lessons from the Published Lessons page in your DIG IN account. It's completely up to you.

The more the merrier! You may set up as many teacher logins as needed to support the number of students in the pricing tier you have purchased.

All teachers can view lessons for all classrooms. DIG IN is a flexible lesson builder that's easy for you to manage—including giving your team full visibility so they can inspire one another.

You have the option to print hard-copy lesson materials, download and email files to your sub, or set up a login for your sub so he or she can download his or her own lesson materials. You're covered!

No. A computer with an internet connection is only needed to build lessons and download or print your lesson content. Within your classroom, your teachers can teach from a hardcopy printout or a mobile device. For video content, we recommend either downloading video files to a device connected to a TV or projector, or you can purchase a quarterly DVD and play the videos using a standard DVD player.

Yes. We provide a permission release document here that you may take with you to any printing service to certify you have the rights to reproduce the materials for local church use.