Mark 10:41

And Jesus Said: Week #1: LOVE

2010-08-31T19:23:00.000-07:00

We've started a new series of lessons this week, most of which are really old lessons in a new format. We're talking about the most important thing we could ever really talk about... We keep telling these kids to follow Jesus, follow Jesus, follow Jesus, and yet, we haven't really been teaching them what it is Jesus SAID. They know the basics of Jesus' life, but as for the words popping out of his mouth at every turn, we haven't gone there. So, that's what we're hitting these next few weeks.

We're taking a different word Jesus spoke about every week. On Sunday mornings, we talk about what was said, the meaning, the definition, what it looks like in our lives and what it's looked like in other people's lives. The kids are given a verse to memorize, and a story to read over the course of the week with some questions to answer. These are meant to get the kids thinking about the lesson over a longer period of time, to get the kids reading their bibles, and to get the kids and their families engaged in what's going on. The Wednesday night crew gets double the teaching... We take the same basic lesson from Sunday morning, but this time we apply it to the story that was the take home for the week... We use games, drama, movie clips, food, whatever it takes to reinforce the point. For those of you who want to get to this on your own, this week we studied Matthew 22:34-40, and the take home is the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).

In this lesson, we come across the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They are, like always, fighting! We had to understand, of course, why these two groups of people seem to always be at odds with each other. Well, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were both brands of the Jewish faith, but they were vastly different. The Sadducees believed in only the written word of God... This means that anything that was spoken ORALLY to the people by God was out of the Sadducees mindset... Think about some of these things... The kids got a few of them! One of them said "Don't kill Isaac!" which I thought was pretty funny and also very telling at the same time--what if Abraham had been a Sadducee!? Regardless, we tossed around a few ideas (Noah and the ark, Abraham and Isaac, etc, etc) before we finally hit on the big one. What about those 10 commandments we're supposed to be following? Those were definitely spoken to Moses! We talked about the Sadducees and how they lived a pretty sad life (pnemonic device! sad life, saducees!) because they didn't believe all of what God had for them. And they lived their lives in a mentality of "well if I think it should be right then it is!" which wasn't good. So those were the Sadducees, and they were always fighting with our friends the Pharisees. You see, the Pharisees took everything very literal. You know, so when the bible says "an eye for an eye", they literally thought you should pluck out someone else's eye if yours was plucked out (so they couldn't see, pnemonic device. Pharisees, couldn't see!)... So they took everything very, very seriously. So these two groups obviously didn't have much in common... But that's enough background for now.

So, the Pharisees come up to Jesus because they've heard that Jesus has basically zip-lipped the Sadducees. And hey, most of the time when someone zip-lips our enemies, we tend to think that person is on our side. So, you know. I suppose they did. Then all of a sudden, this lawyer-Pharisee (what a combination, huh?) asks Jesus, "hey, Jesus, old buddy, old pal, what's the greatest commandment?" (and you know these Pharisees are going to do so much with this info!) and Jesus basically says "Love." I mean, he says more than that. He says "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul." But really, it all boils down to love.

Now, I've been reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend that you do. I also recommend that you find a good time where you can be alone when you read it, and that you really take what it says to heart. I'm only on chapter five, and already I've been challenged. The book is all about how we don't love Jesus correctly. But I won't spoil it for you. Basically, the point is that before this lesson I was already thinking about this whole concept of loving Jesus. Really loving him. Full on with everything I've got. So this lesson was just another kick in the rear. But, back to the actual lesson.

We split the kids into groups after our super awesome discussion with them. In one group, we had the "mind" group. In another, the "heart". And in another, the "soul". We gave each group four markers, a piece of paper, and three to four brains (aka children). Each group had two tasks. The first was to draw a picture that answered this question: "How can I love Jesus with my whole ______?" (mind group filled in mind, soul group filled in soul, etc). Then, after they had done that, they were supposed to come up with a fun dance move to do whenever they heard the phrase "with all my ____" (mind, heart, soul). We gave them a few minutes for this activity.

We played the song "Love the Lord" by Lincoln Brewster, and had the kids jump up and do their dance as quick as possible when they heard their phrase. This was chaotic and super fun! By the end of the song, most of the kids knew the bible verse. AND if they didn't, we had moves for them to learn in the order of the bible verse. I'm interested to see how many of them retained it. We'll review it the next Sunday.

After this, each group shared their answers to the first question. We got some great answers.

Heart : loving my neighbors, helping my friends, feeding hungry people, being like Jesus
Soul : praising Jesus, worshiping, being happy with Jesus, praying
Mind : thinking about Jesus, praying, reading my bible, doing my best in school

We had the kids each think about a way they can love Jesus this week. We ended with a game and challenged the kids to learn the Bible verse, read the Bible story (or live it, if they come Wednesday night!), and live out their calling to some crazy love. Next week will be the one parents don't want to miss... We're talking about obeying.

Hall of Faith: Week 1

2010-06-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

This summer we'll be looking at the Hebrews Hall of Faith, which is found in Hebrews 11. Last week I gave the kids "homework" to read the first five verses of Hebrews 11 to prepare them for the lesson today. It definitely came in handy!

This week we focused on Hebrews 11:6, which has always been a verse that kind of haunts me in the things I do. "Without faith it is impossible to please God, for anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." It's chilling to think that those times when I don't have faith are the times when I'm not pleasing God. Not surprising, just chilling. Either way, it was important that the kids hear this verse, so we worked around it.

We started out playing a game of Sardines. The first game we played normal. The second game, I told the kids they would get a prize if they found the "sardine". Man! I haven't seen kids run that fast in a long time!!! We talked about how it's so much easier to really run hard after something if there's a prize involved. Both times "luck" worked in our favor as the kids found each other in about thirty seconds (in contrast to about five minutes the first time). We had the kids try and define "faith". All of our kids did a really good job. Faith is believing God, trusting God. Hoping in God even when we don't see how it can happen! We read Hebrews 11:1 which says that faith is basically confidence in things that have yet to happen and hope in things unseen. The kids accepted this definition and we went on our way.

We split the older kids from the younger kids and I brought the older kids into the library while Ms. Danielle did a similar lesson in the other room. Reading over Hebrews 11:6, we took it bit by bit. We talked about why it was impossible to please God without faith. As one of our kids pointed out, God really wants us to trust Him, and when we don't trust Him, that makes him sad. We talked about how important it is for us to have faith because we always want to please God. We talked about how silly it would be to walk up to someone and tell them they don't exist, and how that's what makes it so important that we believe God exists! It's super hard to have a relationship with someone who doesn't exist!

The last part was the trickiest. We talked about the rewards God gives us. I asked the kids if they thought God gave the same reward to everybody. At first they said, "no!" I challenged them, just to see if they would change their minds. I was so proud of them when they stuck to their answer--totally the truth!!! Last week we had talked about how God made us different and how he knows us intimately and loves us completely. We talked about how a God that knows us this well would know how to reward us best! God doesn't just give a blanket prize of gum to every student (even the ones who don't like it!). God makes sure to give us things we will really like!

This is where our morning got really amazing. I had the kids think about ways they've been "rewarded" by God. They all mentioned experiences they had--not gifts or tangible things. I thought that was really awesome, that they realized that experiences (ALL of which were experiences of being with and helping others!!) can be rewards. We talked about why those stuck out to them as being "rewards" from God, and they said because they felt really good when doing it. That they felt like they were doing the right thing and that feeling was probably a reward from God. I was really impressed with our kids and the depth of their understanding of God and how he made each of them!

Then we pulled it back around with the simple question that's not so simple to answer. "If we can't please God without having faith, where do you need to have faith even in those rewards God's given you?" This was really awesome and really got to the heart of the kids that were down there. They all expressed that they needed to have faith that what they were doing would make a difference, and that God would use them.

This was one of those Sundays that I think might have been more influential for me as a teacher than for them as "students". That fifteen minute conversation with our kids showed me that the kids at Holy Cross seem to understand that:

God made them unique and gave them all special gifts.
God is always looking to USE them to impact people for Him.
God rewards them in ways that are more than tangible.
The biggest rewards are in relationships and serving others.
There is ALWAYS an opportunity for faith in God.

We closed with such an awareness of the ways God has blessed each one of us, and the ways we continually need to have faith in Him daily. I'm continually inspired by our kids and so thankful for the amazing reward God has given me in working with them.

Next week, the kids should have read through Hebrews 11:6-12. We'll be talking about our first big name Hall of Faith-er!

Is Jesus The Messiah: Week 14

2010-04-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

Wow! This Easter was amazing! Our kids are just inspiring me so much and continuing to impress me with their faith in Jesus and their desire to follow Him. We had all of our kids that came downstairs in both services commit or re-commit to following Jesus as the Messiah, and that was just the coolest thing ever, hearing their voices as they accepted everything Jesus did for them and asked for God's help in their walks with Him. It was definitely one of the highlights of my life, watching these kids take off running for Jesus.

We've been working off a puzzle for the past however many weeks, and when we started Sunday's lesson, this is what our puzzle had finally dwelled down to. As you can see, there's a big white gap in the middle of what seems to be a pretty solid puzzle. We read in 1 Corinthians 15:14 that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, all of our faith and all of our teaching is useless. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, it doesn't matter that all of the other pieces of the puzzle are complete because there's one that isn't. And since we know God doesn't lie, we know that puzzle piece has to fit. So we were determined to find it! Along the way we read in both Hosea 6:2 and Psalm 16:10 and found three things that have to happen for us to earn that last puzzle piece. Jesus has to be missing from the grave/tomb, we have to be able to live in his presence, and on the third day, He has to rise. We decided to take great efforts to ensure that these three things are true. If this is the last piece of the puzzle, it could change our entire lives, so we wanted to be POSITIVE.

So we decided that instead of JUST looking at the bible for the answers to our question, we were going to explore a little bit around the bible. We asked the kids where the first place they look for something is... After a bit of help, we got to the real answer, which is "the last place I saw it!" So, we reasoned that if Jesus really did rise from the dead, we should check the last place we saw Him! If He's there, we know he didn't really rise. If He's not there, well, we can still think that maybe he did. So here's the evidence that we found that Jesus did in fact, rise from the dead:

The whole movement of Christianity STARTED in the place where Jesus died and rose from the dead. It's kind of like if I went up to one of you and said, "hey did you see that awesome new amusement park right by the Walmart?" Every one of you would be able to tell me that I'm pulling your leg. Why? Because you pass by that every time you come to church and you've never seen it! Same thing with an empty tomb. These people wouldn't have just taken a disciple's word for it... and it wasn't something they heard about from a distant land. These were people who had SEEN the empty tomb and believed it! So we know there was some validity to what they said.
Historically speaking, the burial and crucifixion accounts are accurate. This means that historians have said, "hey! that really happened the way he said it!" We can assume that since the same guy wrote the burial, crucifixion, and resurrection accounts of Jesus, that the third is just as accurate as the first two.
People who aren't Christians, people who DESPISED Jesus, confirmed he wasn't in the tomb... Now, why would they do that unless it was ABSOLUTELY TRUE? This was their chance to really disprove the disciples once and for all. But they had no ammunition to go on. They saw the empty tomb.
Really, really important people and prophets all had shrines where their bones lay. This dates back thousands of years ago... Yet, there's no shrine for who was considered the GREATEST and MOST IMPORTANT person in History... That tells us that perhaps they couldn't find his bones to build a shrine near... Hmm... No bones, no body!
Paul says so.

So we looked at all that ammunition that says YES ITS TRUE. But then we decided we wanted to know the other part of the story. So many people don't believe Jesus is the Messiah because they don't think He rose from the dead... There's no dispute that the tomb is empty, but if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, how did He get out of that tomb? We looked at the two big conspiracies people say. And debunked them.

Some people argue that the disciples stole Jesus' body - Okay first of all, this is totally inconsistent with the disciples' characters. Second of all, we know that 10 out of the 12 disciples (excluding Judas and John) died brutal, awful martyrs deaths for this cause they believed. They died because they believed Jesus died and rose again. If they had stolen the body of Jesus, they would have known that He didn't rise again. Who in their right mind would die for something that they KNEW was a lie? We won't even go to time-out for a lie, let alone die! And then you have to think, lastly... You know, the disciples had just watched their leader get hacked up and thrown on a cross... And people hated them. And they had been so afraid they had literally fled the scene and scattered.... And now we're thinking they risked being seen to go and move a two ton rock out of the way and steal a dead body wrapped in linen? Yeah, uh huh. Not to mention the guards in front of the tomb weren't about to let this body go stolen--that would have been their heads on a platter. So I think we can safely say this conspiracy is just that.
Some people believe Jesus just got up and walked out - Okay, really? Let's think about this. Jesus is fully human. What happened to Jesus right before he was put in the tomb? He was beaten to the point where he had organs coming out of his body, he was scourged, he had a crown of thorns placed into his forehead, he carried a huge cross up a hill on the same back that was scourged and skinless, was attached with nails to it, hung on that very cross for six hours straining to breathe, had professional executioners announce him dead, and was pierced in the side by a sword so all his blood shot out... THEN on top of that, he was wrapped in 100 pounds of linen (we would liken this to a middle schooler), and he laid in a dark, cold tomb with no water or food for three days... And then, miraculously on the third day he just bolted right out of that linen and pushed that same two ton stone up a hill and appeared to his disciples and they said "HEY! ITS THE CONQUEROR OF LIFE!" Yeah, no. If he had managed to do that, I'm pretty sure the first thing the disciples would have said was "uhh, lets get you to a hospital buddy." I think we can safely assume this conspiracy is pretty much all fabrication... After all, I twist my ankle and I don't want to get up and walk around on it for a few days... Jesus had it much worse, and yet we expect him to just bolt out of the grave. No sense.

So, we can safely assume from all this that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead. Check one. So next we're going to look at how it said Jesus came down to live in our presence... HMM. Well, aside from us going up to Heaven to be with him, (Today you'll be with me in paradise, hmm hmm)... We know that Jesus appeared to his disciples AFTER the resurrection. In fact, there's even that instance where Jesus says to Thomas, "hey, come feel the holes in my hand and touch my side where I was pierced"... So we know that he appeared to Thomas AFTER death because he showed Thomas the markings of his death... And the disciples were there when Jesus ascended into heaven... So he definitely appeared after the death... But, those are all Christian sources... Maybe they had an agenda... So let's look at non-Christian sources and see what they say. Yep, even the regular, historical sources that don't believe in Jesus and don't buy into this Christianity thing said that Jesus did in fact appear to people after he died.... Okay. I'm convinced. Check.

So the last one... That it would happen on the third day. Well, this is where we read Luke 24:50:52 and Luke 24:1-7.... Yep, that says third day. Then we counted on our fingers.... What day is Good Friday? Friday. Saturday. What day is Easter Sunday? Sunday. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Three days. Check.

We put the last piece of the puzzle on the board until finally we were left with this. As Ben and Sam show you, the final puzzle piece is there and now we know without a doubt that Jesus is the Messiah! The one that saves us! YES! We had a huge cheer go up as soon as the puzzle was finished! All of the kids were so excited, and it was so awesome watching them get so thrilled about the end result!

We didn't just leave it there, though. We try to inspire faith with action in our kids, and so we asked the kids what we should do, now that everything we thought has been confirmed to us. What do we do with this knowledge that Jesus is the Messiah? We talked about how the Messiah is the person that saves us from our sins and that helps us live a good life and a life that honors God. So we all decided that since God had done what he promised and sent Jesus, and since Jesus had done what he promised and died for us (AND ROSE AGAIN!), we could trust God to lead us for the rest of our lives. So we put our faith in Jesus, and we prayed that He would cleanse us from our sins and help us lead a holy life. It was definitely really amazing watching as our entire children's ministry committed to following Jesus--I can't wait to see the fruit of it all!

Here are a few more pictures of the puzzle we worked on:

Here's a picture of the whole backboard the puzzle was created on. In the upper left corner was where we put the puzzle pieces with the "clues" on them (we played the whole thing up as a "GUESS WHO" kind of deal, with the Messiah being the answer... All of the prophecies God gave us were "clues" to help us figure out who it was).

Then below that is a timeline of when the Old Testament books were written, to help with showing the kids how much time passed between what God said was gonna happen and what actually did. Then the upper right corner has a checklist (enlarged to the left) of the various prophecies/clues we looked at (but not all of them that are out there!) and then below that is a timeline of Jesus' ministry, so the kids could see how it all played out. The puzzle pieces were attached with velcro, and you can't see it now, but originally there was just a big purple question mark. Each of the puzzle pieces had the old Testament verse and the New Testament fulfillment written on them, and the New Testament verse velcroed on top of the Old Testament verse that was written on the backboard. It was all very cool and the kids loved it, and Ms. Amanda, Ms. Danielle and I loved teaching it! We're looking forward to our next series of lessons, which will be teaching the kids HOW to follow the Messiah. I can't wait!

To see the full list of the prophecies with the verses, click here.

Is Jesus The Messiah?: Week 12

2010-03-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

We've got two puzzle pieces left on our puzzle, which means this coming up week is make it or break it for Jesus. He's got to do something pretty powerful for us to be convinced he's the messiah, and as the kids reminded me this week, if that last puzzle piece doesn't fit, Jesus ain't our man. We're all hoping he is--we've started to really like this guy!

So this week we looked at the prophecy that says the Messiah will be betrayed by a close friend. In addition, the prophecy said that the price for the Messiah's body will be thirty silver coins, that the coins will be given to the potter and thrown to the temple, and that Israel and Judea will be scattered as a result.

The first part we looked at was whether Jesus was betrayed by a close friend. We talked about how Jesus' closest friends were the disciples, and how we knew Judas was one of his disciples. They went to church together, broke bread together.... And Judas was in charge of the money and the scheduling of the whole operation. Judas was of course secretly a thief. But, alas, it was Judas that betrayed Jesus. Check.

We talked about the thirty coins... When Zechariah wrote about the thirty coins, they were worth a lot more. In fact, the thirty coins were the price of a single slave. As time passed, the value of the coins went down, but the price stayed the same. By the time Jesus was betrayed for thirty coins, it was equivalent to about 25 bucks in today's time. You couldn't even buy a Wii game with that! Check.

Judas was so overcome with grief and remorse that he'd betrayed Jesus that he threw the coins into the temple. (CHECK). However, Jewish law prohibited money being put into the temple that had been come by illegally. So, the people gathered up all of the money and sold it to buy a potter's field (money to the potter, check).

As a result of Jesus' crucifixion, there was a huge fight between Israel and Rome. Because of this, one section of Israel stayed with Israel, and the other section joined what is now Palestine... In this way, Judea and Israel were scattered. (check).

Next week is Easter, and we're all so excited to see if Jesus is who he says he is! I'm thinking he is!!!

A break in the schedule...

2010-03-26T06:18:00.001-07:00

My totally awesome brother filled in for me and miss Amanda and miss Danielle this weekend, as all three of us were unable to be at church. So, instead of updating you on a lesson plan, I'll update you on where I was this weekend. I saw God move in some really awesome ways!

My senior year of high school God called me and some of my friends to start an Anglican youth retreat for the diocese. This was an incredibly awesome and challenging experience and tested my faith in many ways. However, it was one of the single most growing things God has ever called me to, and I'm so thankful for it. The retreat occurs twice a year, and now, three years later, we're heading onto #8 in December. #7 was this past weekend, and I attended the church service that occurs for the community of believers in the diocese. There's a story that was told that blew me away, brought tears to my eyes, and still leaves me in awe of how much God loves me, and how resourceful He is. The fruit of obedience lasts for longer than a few seasons and is impacting people even today.

There was a young senior who is 18 years old at this weekend. He had been raised actively pagan, and had only become a Christian two months before. His friends signed him up for Dynamos and he went. On Saturday night, they were having a prayer section. As the kids filed out, Father Andrew offered to anoint each one of them and seal the healing work of the prayer session. This young man said okay, but then asked Father Andrew, "actually, can you baptize me tomorrow? Is there a service we can do it at, or something?" Father Andrew started to say yes, but then he decided they would baptize him that night. So they went down to the Suwannee River, filled a cooler with muddy river water, and started a bonfire. Now, normally during a baptism, a parent or someone presents the candidate and offers to help him/her in his spiritual walk. However, nobody was here for this kid. So the entire retreat filled with candidates and team members stood up, and as a community presented this kid for baptism. They dunked his head in the cooler of muddy water and baptized him in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I heard him tell this story at the closing service, and was in awe. His face glowed, and you could tell he was just alive with the Spirit. It was so incredible to see the change in this kid!

The spirit is alive and moving in our community and in the hearts of our kids. Dynamos is a wonderful reminder to me that what God says He's going to do, God does. That when we say "yes" to God, God continually says "yes" to the fruit that pours out of what we're doing. I would never have thought this retreat would be the catalyst for a baptism, but the work I did three years ago, and the obedience I had then is impacting people today. It's my prayer and hope that we can all live into this and start saying "yes" to God more often because it impacts more than just our current situation. I hope that we can instill in our kids the way of living a life that says YES to God. Reckless abandonment of our own lives for His purposes.

Also, Congratulations to the Strickland family :) So great to have another kid in our Ministry to pour into!

Is Jesus The Messiah?: Week 11

2010-03-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

Before I go on, let me just give a shoutout to my pal Ava who's been reading these things! HEY AVA!

Alright, so this week we talked about a whole set of prophecies. I gave each of the kids a notecard. The notecard had one of three questions:

How do these verses show Jesus' purpose?
What do these verses tell us about Jesus' death?
What do these verses tell us about what happened after Jesus' death?

There were about 4-5 sets of verses in each category. Each one had an Old Testament Verse on the back and a New Testament verse below it. Each of the verses showed part of what we've been studying about Jesus being the Messiah. Here's a good list:

He came as a ransom for our sins.
He died on a tree.
There were nails in his hands and feet.
No bones were broken on his body.
They cast lots for His clothes
He divided the spoil (criminals) with the strong (himself)
He didn't speak
Prayed for his accusers
Marked among transgressors
Rejected by everyone
Spat on and struck

The kids got in groups according to their questions, then answered the question with their particular cards in front of everyone. We went over the crucifixion, the beatings of Jesus, and everything Jesus went through for us. We added about 12 pieces to the puzzle, which is awesome. The kids are starting to guess what the picture is. We even had one kid say she didn't need to know anymore, she was convinced. AWESOME.

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Nine

2010-03-01T05:45:00.000-08:00

We were planning on splitting the kids to learn two different really important prophecies this Sunday, but instead we ended up keeping them all together to learn one. Thus, we're relying on a bit of "homework" (but is the bible really homework?) so the kids can learn as many of these awesome puzzle piece prophecies as possible. We won't hit all 200, but we're going to hit a good number of them!

I gave all of the kids a take home card with three bible verses/stories underlined. The old testament verse is Psalm 78:2. It basically said that the Messiah was going to speak in parables. Parables are pretty simply stories that describe or teach. Here's what I didn't know about parables before planning this lesson: A ton of people spoke in parables, it wasn't just Jesus. So this prophecy seemed so common to these people, and it made the future Messiah seem like a real king or teacher--only high end people did this. But here's the really cool part. Jesus spoke in his own form of parable. If you think of it like a group of categories, there are a category of parables that ONLY Jesus told! This is just plain awesome to me!

The parables can be split up into a few categories, but all of them before Jesus had one common thing. They were all told to explain things that were already written in the Old Testament. There was no new information! It reminded me of the story of the boy who called wolf... It's just a story on a truth we all already know--don't lie! No new information, just a new story to present it. That's the old way of doing parables. Now let's look at Jesus' new category!

Jesus basically spoke in four different types of parables. If you were to break them down, you'd categorize them as nature, discovery, contrast, and trustworthiness. The common thing between all of these was that Jesus ALWAYS spoke in parables about God's kingdom. Other parables were about the law and religious things, but Jesus spoke straight to the kingdom and the face of God. Take the parable of the mustard seed--it shows how vast God's kingdom is, and how small it starts but how great it will become.... Then the parable of the hidden treasure--it shows that we can happily abandon EVERYTHING to follow Jesus... Then the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector--it shows us how much God loves the lost and wants them back (in addition to the "unlost", whoever they are)... Then the persistent widow--it shows us God's trustworthiness no matter what is going on in our lives.

Jesus' parables were different because they didn't focus on explaining what God had already said. They focused on explaining WHO God is and HOW God acts! Jesus' parables couldn't be told with authority by anyone... except HIM. Who better to tell about God's kingdom and God's face and God's character than God himself! What I think is so AWESOME is that God wants us to know about him SO MUCH that he came down to earth not just to die for us, but to TELL US about his love and his awesomeness. Now, that's a God that loves his people!

If you look at the New Testament example in Matthew 7:24-27, you see an awesome parable about the foolish and wise men who built their houses on various foundations. Jesus is awesome in this parable. The basic point is listen to God! Don't build your house on anything that will fade away, but build it on the rock, the only thing that will stand. The parables prove to us that Jesus knows God better than anyone else--nobody else can talk about him the way Jesus can! So, we should build our houses on the foundation of God, because God doesn't shake! God stands strong!

Then read Matthew 13:34-35. We see in this that Jesus fulfilled the promise! Not just because the gospel writers wrote that he did, but we all see countless times in scripture where parables are how Jesus chooses to communicate. In fact 1/3 of the Gospels is filled with Jesus' parables and Jesus explaining God to us! NOW THAT'S COOL.

So, that's the homework for the week... Here's what we actually talked about yesterday morning:

We read Isaiah 35:5-6 and talked about what the verse was basically saying. Basically, God's saying that we're going to know the Messiah because he's going to be making lame walk and blind see and all of that fun stuff. AKA MIRACLES! We defined a miracle as something impossible that God makes impossible. These miracles show God's love not only to the quarantined person ('cause people had to be out of the town when they were sick) but also to the family because it reunited them! It's awesome. Ask your kids about it, they'll probably talk about how Molly was quarantined and then we got her back.

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Eight

2010-02-23T09:12:00.000-08:00

This week, our prophecy studies lead us to a part of Jesus' character that the kids might not have known before. We looked in Psalm 69:9 where it says that the Messiah would have great zeal for his father's house. We talked about what zeal means, and here are some of the words the kids came up with as synonyms.

love
enthusiasm
passion
happy
excited
longing

The Messiah had all of these things for God's house. This is our clue! Then we turned to Luke and read the story of when Jesus was a young boy. His family went on a trip to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They were there for awhile, and then when the festival was over, they headed back to Bethlehem. Jesus stayed behind (whoops!) and Mary and Joseph assumed he was just hitching a ride with someone else. So they got home, and they realized they'd left him, so they turned back around and a few days later, they finally found him.

At this point, we asked the kids if they'd ever been lost before, and if so, where they thought their parents looked first thing. They all said "inside the house", so we made the situation a little bit different. You get lost in Target. Where's the first place your parents look? One of the kids got it spot on when he raised his hand and said "THE TOY SECTION!" We asked him why, and he told us it was because that's where his favorite part of the store was, so he would be there most likely!

We shifted back to the Bible and talked about how Jesus was found in the temple, talking with Rabbis and other people, and they were amazed by him. When Mary came up to him and asked him where he'd been, Jesus was like, "Lady, why didn't you realize I'd be in my favorite place EVER!?" This makes total sense. Duh, of course Jesus would be in the temple!

The kids and I all decided that this story was definitely an example of Jesus' zeal for his father's house. He'd rather be there than anywhere else-even though his pets, video games, and all of his toys were back home. Jesus chose the temple over everything else, constantly. If that doesn't show love, enthusiasm, passion, longing, excitement and happiness for the temple, what does? Jesus was zealous about the temple, just like the Old Testament said he would be.

We could have looked at another story where Jesus overturned tables in the church as an adult, but we didn't get a chance. If you want to read it with your children on your own and talk about how it proves Jesus was zealous, it can be found at John 2:12-25 (or in any of the other Gospels, but John is my favorite if we're talking about zealousness!)

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Seven

2010-02-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

This week we talked about the two prophecies in Isaiah 53:2 and Zechariah 9:9. One of these is a kind of difficult prophecy to digest, and the other is just kind of silly and random, so we had fun with it. We brought the kids downstairs, opened up the bible, and while kids were finding the lessons, we brought up a few things...

The kids and I discussed how God is all powerful and really mighty, and how it makes sense to us that if God could come down as anybody in the world, he would choose to be a King or someone really powerful and awesome. These people were expecting somebody to come in and kick some butt and have a lot of money, but they were in for quite a shock.

We read Isaiah 53:2. We talked about what a "tender shoot" is, and how the prophecy meant two things: 1) Jesus was not attractive (wouldn't you want to be attractive if you could choose how you looked? strange, God) and 2) Jesus was gonna not have a home. Hardly the kind of life you would think the God of the universe would choose for himself. Then we read Zechariah 9:9, where it says the Messiah's gonna come riding on a donkey. We talked about clunker cars... How at one point, those cars were really awesome and like "THE THING" to drive in. Donkeys are the same way. At some point, they were the advanced kind of ride... But then time passed, and people started realizing that donkeys poop everywhere and don't quite do what you want them to do, and they started being kind of like a clunker car... The poor people's ride. With that in mind, we focused our attention on this Jesus guy that people are saying might be the Messiah.

We read Luke 9:58 and Matthew 4:12-16, where we found out Jesus was a homeless dude who had to borrow a donkey. The kids were all shocked to find out they're following a homeless guy. These people thought Jesus was a big deal, and they were so surprised to find out that he was just a homeless guy with no donkey. We talked about WHY God would choose to come down as a homeless man. And one of the things we realized is that we shouldn't treat people any different whether they are homeless or not. They're all the same.

We listened to the song "One of Us" by Joan Osborne and were all kind of sobered by how we might have reacted to Jesus, had he come the same way now. We talked about how to show love to everybody, prayed, and went upstairs for worship.

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Six

2010-02-15T07:25:00.000-08:00

We started off last week by putting on our yarmulkes and reading Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1. These two verses pointed at the prophet right before Jesus that would come to share the good news. We focused on the words 'desert' and 'prepare'. We talked about how God had been silent for 400 years (aka, no prophets) right before John the Baptist showed up. John's whole purpose was to prepare everyone for Jesus.

John was this crazy guy who probably had long hair and ate locusts and wild honey and he was just a little bit "different" than everybody else. We talked about how this showed John's purpose was fulfilled ( re Luke 1:17). We also read Matthew 3:1-6 and talked about how John looked a bit like a freak, but God still used him. And what's more, his appearance played a huge part. People tend to focus on others who look "different", and John certainly did!

The big kids learned about the story of John's birth (Elizabeth getting pregnant, Zechariah's mouth being shut, etc, etc. Then we talked about John's death, and how his death might have helped to prepare the way for Jesus. We discussed that perhaps if John hadn't have died, Jesus wouldn't have had the followers he needed. Even John's death was preparation for Christ! Then we talked about the importance of being obedient to God--> God knows what he's doing, and he gave us all a purpose and we need to fulfill it.

And of course, we talked about baptism.

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Five

2010-02-10T05:58:00.000-08:00

This week was a really interesting lesson, and I heard a lot of the kids really excited about it! Some even said it was their favorite ever! We looked at the prophecies in Jeremiah 31:15 and Hosea 11:1 as a big group--they say that there will be weeping around the time of Jesus' birth, and that out of Egypt He'll come.

One of my favorite parts of this lesson was when we read, "and out of Egypt I will call my son". About five heads shot up, and I was so proud of them for the way they were critically examining the bible. I asked them what was wrong, and they told me that we already read Jesus came out of Bethlehem! What a conundrum, but we all had faith that God would figure this out for us.

We split the kids up into groups... The first group (3-5) went with me. We talked about how Abraham was the father of nations. Then we went on a little genealogy trip. Abraham to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob. We told the story of Jacob's inheritance (You know, the one where he tricked his blind father into giving him a ton of money by skinning a goat and pretending to be his other brother Esau?) and how he ran away. While he was running, he came across a field and fell madly in love with this girl, Rachel (is this a Disney movie, or what?). He asked her father, Laban to let him marry her, and he said "sure buddy, but you gotta work for 7 years!" So Jacob did but it felt like nothing because he was so enamored with this girl. Then he gets married and he wakes up the next morning and WHOOPS, it's the uglier sister, Leah. Crap. So, he goes back to Laban and asks him what his deal is, and Laban says "okay, work another 7!" and so Jacob does and he finally gets Rachel.

Meanwhile, Leah and Jacob have all these kids... but he can't get any goin' with Rachel, so he's really upset. God's closed Rachel's womb because of favoritism, and Rachel's upset about it. Then miracle baby Joseph comes along (remember, the favorite of the pack? I wonder why that could be...), and Rachel's like "hey! I want another one!" so miracle baby Benjamin comes along, and in the middle of delivery (cue the lights for drama), Rachel starts weeping frantically because she's about to die giving birth to this baby, and she starts weeping for her children. And so the Jews have called her the mother of all Jews (kind of like how some Christians refer to Mary).

So, that's what the first group learned....

Then the second group (K-2) went on a mission. They read Matthew 2:1-12, which basically says that the wise men met with Herod (bad guy!) before coming to see Jesus, and Herod told them to come back and tell him if the baby is really the King of the Jews 'cause he wanted to "worship" him (and by worship, we mean kill). So the wise men went, saw Jesus was awesome. God came down and said, "Listen, buddies, don't go back to Herod, 'cause he's gonna kill the baby", so the wise men were wise and went a different way back to their homelands. Eventually Herod started to realize they weren't coming back, so he headed to Bethlehem to kill all the boys under 2. So, we kids went on a mission with our baby Jesus (our shoes), and we heard God telling us to flee to Egypt, so we did. We ran away from Herod, and WHEW! we were safe.

Everybody came back together and we had the big kids tell the young kids about Rachel, and the young kids told the big kids about Egypt. We looked at the old testament verses again, and we saw that it totally came true! Rachel was weeping for babies being slaughtered, AND Jesus did come out of Egypt because he had to flee there. GO GOD!

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Four

2010-02-01T07:05:00.000-08:00

This week we did something a little different and split the kids up into age groups. We have a new set up downstairs that's really awesome and allows us to be more creative and more savvy in how we teach the kids. We started down in the "basement" together as a group and reviewed the last few prophecies (David, Abraham, a virgin, Immanuel) and looked at the puzzle pieces to see how the puzzle looked. We had the kids color Yarmulkes (since we're Jewish children!) and then we prayed, read the Old Testament scriptures, and split into separate rooms.

K-2 went with Ms. Amanda into the library and focused on the prophecy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. They read Micah 5:2 and talked about how the verse tells us that the Messiah will come from a small town called Bethlehem, that it's a Jewish town, and that there will only be one Messiah who will rule from beginning to end. Then the kids read Luke 2:4-6, and Matthew 2:1-6 and they went on a journey.

In the passage, we learn that Joseph wasn't even supposed to be in Bethlehem. Joseph and Mary actually lived in a town called Nazareth, but they had to go to Bethlehem for a census since Joseph was part of David's line, and David was from Bethlehem (throw back to first prophecy!) So the kids all pretended to be Mary and Joseph going on a journey. Now, Nazareth was only about 80 miles away from Bethlehem but we've got to shift a minute... Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? The Samaritans and the Galileans were in a huge fight. Nazareth is located in Samaria, Bethlehem is in Judea, and in the middle was Galilee. Going a direct route to Bethlehem would have been REALLY dangerous. We had the kids sneak around the warring towns--it would have been too dangerous for Mary to go through the straight path! So, Joseph and Mary had to travel around the towns--almost double that amount!--to get to Bethlehem. This could have taken at least a week! God really went out of his way to make this prophecy come true.

Two things we found were special about Bethlehem:

David is from Bethlehem - That's why Joseph and Mary had to go back there. They were part of David's line.
Bethlehem literally means "House of Bread"- Many times in scripture, Jesus refers to himself as "the bread of life".

3-5 stayed with Ms. Karis in the big room and talked about the other part of the prophecy, found in Psalm 72:10. We talked about what it meant to bring gifts to someone. Usually gifts are given to someone you think highly of, or love. We talked about the difference between someone walking from Mexico to bring you gifts vs. sending it in the mail and what message it sends to you... that you're important and loved.

We then read Matthew 2:9-12. We talked about how the gifts that were brought to Jesus were both prophetic and common for a King. They were very expensive gifts and very common for royalty. The first things they show us is that the Magi recognized the importance of Jesus. The meanings of the gifts also point to the Messiah.

Gold - the most precious, given only to royalty. Tells us that Jesus is a KING (per Daniel 2:38)
Myrrh - heals wounds. We likened this to the potion Edmund got from Lucy in Chronicles of Narnia. It shows us that Jesus is a reconciler and a healer (per John 19:39)
Frankincense - represents life and purity. Tells us that Jesus is sinless and a lifegiver (per Leviticus 5:11).

We also talked about how the Magi were not Jewish (they were astrologers!) so they knew nothing about this Jesus guy or the Messiah. They just saw a star and followed it.

Then all the children came back into the big room and taught each other about the prophecy they learned. We added a puzzle piece to the mix, prayed, and sent the kids upstairs. 6/200

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Three

2010-01-17T10:27:00.000-08:00

Whew! I've known this week was coming up for a few weeks now, and I've been thinking and praying about how best to approach the prophecy for today. I think it's important the kids know the prophecy of Mary's virgin birth, but how to explain it to kids ages 5-12 in a way that won't leave parents scratching their heads is tough! But, I think we did it justice.

We began with a discussion of purity. We talked about how something that's pure means that nothing else has been mixed together with it. We used play-doh as an example. When you have one color (say, pink) and it hasn't been played yet, it's purely pink. But when you introduce blue to the mix, the pink and blue mix together and make purple and that pink play-doh is no longer purely pink. We talked about how that's what sin is like--it mixes with us and then we aren't pure anymore.

We told the kids that there are different types of purity. Purity of thought, purity of speech, and purity of action. Then we read our scripture. We read Isaiah 7:14, which says, in essence, that the Messiah would be born of a virgin and called Immanuel. This was where things got tricky! We explained to the kids that virgin is a subcategory of purity, but that it's a special kind of purity because only unmarried people can be virgins. We also told the kids that it was completely impossible to be both a virgin and a parent. We laughed about how that seemed pretty impossible then, to mix the two!

We then read Matthew 1:18-21 which says that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that he was named Jesus. We told the kids that even though it was impossible for a virgin to be a parent, God worked a miracle by putting Jesus in Mary and making her a parent, even while she was still a virgin. The kids were really excited about how God could work miracles, and I felt like they got the general concept of the Wow! factor without any disruptions of innocence. :)

We also talked about how Immanuel means "God with us" and Jesus means "God Save Us". We went to John 1:1 and talked about how when Jesus was on this earth he was GOD WITH US, and then when he died on the cross he was the God that saved us. So he is both Immanuel and Jesus. 4/200 :)

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week Two

2010-01-16T20:53:00.000-08:00

Our goals for this Sunday were to help the kids understand that we are all sons of Abraham and sons of God, and also to show them how God kept his promise to Abraham. I think it was all pretty effective

We began with a quick overview of who Abraham is. We went over the story of how he was too old to have a child, of how God promised him Isaac and many descendants.

We read Genesis 17:7 and Genesis 21:12, which both say that Abraham will have many descendants and that these descendants will come through Isaac. This is the point where we introduced the part of Abraham's story where Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac. We talked about how this was not just a test of Abraham's faith that God was good, but also a test of Abraham's faith in God's promises--after all, how would he have MANY descendants through a son that was sacrificed! This seems like a covenant that couldn't come true...

So then we read Hebrews 11:17-19, which says that God raised Isaac. We talked about how God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son, and instead provided the ram for him. Then we read Matthew 1:2 where it shows us that Jesus came from the same physical line as Abraham. Since God is the father of all, it's true that Abraham has many descendants--all believers of Jesus are descendants of Abraham.

We read John 1:12 and Galatians 3:6-9 and talked about how we are all sons of Abraham and sons of God because we have faith in Christ. God kept his covenant and promise with Abraham, and the prophecies of the scriptures checked out! 2/200.

If you're keeping a checklist at home:

1) In David's line

2) In Abraham's line

Is Jesus the Messiah?: Week One

2010-01-03T11:21:00.000-08:00

For the next semester, up until the kids get out of school in June, we're going to be focusing on Jesus as our Messiah. The idea and brainstorming for this section has been going on for almost a year, and it feels right for this point in our kids' walks with Christ and the life of our church. Each week we're going to take a different prophecy for the coming Messiah and put it up against Jesus. The kids are going to see as the entire puzzle plays out, and hopefully will be able to share with the parents what they learned.

First, a little background information. The Bible is split up into two parts--The Old and New Testament. What's the difference? All of the kids got that question right. There was an emphatic chant of JESUS from the crowd. I'm glad we know that much :) What the kids had trouble with was what do we do with the Old Testament? If we're followers of Jesus, why would we read a book that has no Jesus in it? One of the first-graders hit the nail on the head, "because it's how God and us get along. It shows our sins." True. At this point, I asked the kids what the word messiah means. We finally figured out that it basically meant Savior. We talked about how before Jesus, the Jewish children had to wait for the Messiah to come, and they were always on the lookout. But, God didn't leave them with nothing to go on--he put clues in the Old Testament to help describe who Jesus is. We decided to go back in time to when Jesus was born and to look at the clues and try and figure out if this Jesus character really is the Messiah. We also looked at the dates between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Thousands of thousands of years, in some cases!

The first thing the Jewish children would have looked for is a prophecy that happens multiple times in the scriptures. The scriptures say clearly that the Son of God will be a part of David's family. We read three or four verses and talked about what it meant to be a descendent of David and to be a part of his house. We talked about how this ruled out a lot of people when the Jewish children were looking. If they weren't part of David's family, they couldn't be the Messiah. So, now that we knew the Messiah was part of David's family, we had to figure out if Jesus was.

So, we went to the New Testament. We found more than a few confirmations that Jesus was part of David's family. The kids all thought that was really cool. Then I read to them from Matthew 1--we laughed about all of the names and silly phrasings, and we talked about how nobody ever reads the genealogy (woah! big word!), but the Jewish children did because it was so important that the Messiah came from David's line. The kids and I all decided we would continue to check Jesus against the Messiah. He hadn't steered us wrong yet.... Oh yeah, and we talked about how at that time, everything went back to the father. I asked the kids who Jesus' father was--Got a few Joseph's, a few God's. And his mother, Mary. We quickly realized that God was obviously related to David, Joseph was related to David, and so was Mary. So, there was no doubt that Jesus was related to King David. Awesomeness. 1/200.

We then played a little game to reinforce the whole point. We sent one kid out of the room. The rest of us picked a "golden person". When the other kid came back in, we had him try and guess who the "golden person" is. Everybody in the room gave one clue. We talked about how hard it would be to not have any clues whatsoever--the chances of being wrong would be way too big. Then we talked about how we're lucky God gave us clues. And that our clue this week was that the Messiah would come from David's line. And so far, Jesus stacks up.

Wired for Worship: Week Six

2009-11-30T06:57:00.000-08:00

With Advent coming up the following week, last Sunday was our last lesson on worship. The kids really seemed to love the unit, and we loved teaching it. So our last week, we went back to Jesus and focused on what Jesus has to do with worship. The topic was communion, which is a little tricky to explain to kids... Okay, very tricky. Symbolism doesn't quite grab their fancies.

Thanksgiving was coming up that Thursday, so we did a little Thanksgiving review. The kids were all wondering what in the world Pilgrims and Native Americans had to do with Jesus, I'm sure. We talked about how there was one big Thanksgiving meal years and years ago, to celebrate the Pilgrims and Native Americans meeting together. Then, every year since then, we've all sat down as a family and filled our faces with stuffing and turkey and casseroles--as a reminder of what the first Thanksgiving was like. This was the perfect tie in to Jesus.

I asked the kids what meal they had every week at church. Communion eventually came out of the crowd, and we talked about how the first time Jesus and his disciples had the Last Supper was very special, and that it was a passover event. Jesus held up the wine and the bread. We talked about what the wine and the bread symbolized. Jesus' blood shed for us, and His body broken for us. I asked the kids why Jesus' blood was shed for us, and His body was broken for us. SIN. Then I drew their attention to a little chalice up at the front I'd drawn. It was empty, and next to it was a piece of bread. I had all of the kids call out sins they'd committed, and we wrote them inside the chalice. There were a lot of sins. But what did those have to do with Jesus? Why did Jesus have to die for our sins?

We use the analogy of cleaning. When Mom mops the floor, she tells you not to go on it, you might get it dirty. Because as soon as your dirty feet touch the clean floor, it's no longer clean. We talked about how God is that way. If we touch him with our dirtiness, God is no longer clean. But the difference is that God is unable to be unclean. If God wasn't clean, He wouldn't be God. So instead, we're kept at a distance in our dirtiness. But what happened was that Jesus shed his blood, and his blood covered us, so that we can be clean with God, who is also clean. Then we colored in the wine on the chalice, over the sins. The sins were no longer visible. That's how Jesus' blood was shed for us.

We read 1 Corinthians 11:26-28.

"For whenever you eat this bread or drink this cup, you are proclaiming the Lord's death until He comes. Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before eating the bread or drinking the cup."

Taking it verse by verse, we talked about what it means to be "proclaiming the Lord's death". The kids were all pretty quick at this one, which surprised me. The simple idea was that we're telling everyone that Jesus shed his blood and broke his body for us. Then we talked about what an "unworthy manner" could be. This one took a bit of work. But we talked about how Jesus did this FOR us, and how communion is more of an exchange than anything else. When we go up to drink the wine and eat the bread, what we're doing is giving Jesus our sins, and taking the body and blood he gives back to us. If we don't give Jesus our sins when we go up, we're going up in an unworthy manner, and we're taking from the Lord without giving anything. That's why we need to examine ourselves and give our sins to God when we go up there.

Leading from there out, we talked about how communion is an act of worship. Because Jesus died for our sins, the way that we thank him is by actually taking what he gave us. How would you feel if you gave somebody a present and they didn't take it, they just gave it back to you and didn't want it? You would feel hurt. That's what we do to Jesus if we don't take the body and blood that he gave for us. And we give him our sins in exchange for it. One of the kids mentioned that everything we do with God is a give and take, and how worship is like that too. Worship always starts with God giving us something. It never starts with us. It's ALWAYS our response to God. And so when God gave His son for us, we respond in thanking him by taking what He gave us, and giving Him what he wants. Cleanliness. And the whole reason he wants cleanliness is so we can be with Him.

We did the Hot Seat again that week, and it was really wonderful some of the things the kids said. I have the audio clips of it, but I need to figure out how to post them. Here's one from the week before, though.

The question was "What is worship?"

Child: It's like, a relationship.
Amanda: How do you think God feels when we worship him?
Child: I think he feels glad, and happy...
Amanda: How do you feel?
Child: It makes me feel glad that I did it.

Reminder: Christmas Unwrapped rehearsals are every Wednesday night from 6:30-7:30ish, and Sundays at 10:30 (between the services.) The actual event is on Sunday, December 13th at 6 PM.

A Letter to Non-Christians

2009-11-25T11:19:00.000-08:00

Shane Claiborne wrote books like "The Irresistible Revolution" and "Jesus For President", and was just published in the December/Christmas edition of Esquire, which is pretty cool. I read what he wrote, which is basically a letter to non-Christians and found it really interesting some of the things he said. And I agree with him on most points (I hesitate to say all until I've really read it all and prayed through it and thought about it). I think it's an important reminder to us Christians that when people first called followers of Jesus "Christians", it wasn't a compliment, it was an insult. Sometimes I think it's still that way today. We're following a Jesus who was spit on, mocked, and hated because he preached love and joy and peace to people that the rest of the world hated, ridiculed and spat on. Jesus wasn't clean cut, and he wasn't wearing polo shirts and jeans to church on Sundays. He was the homeless, raggedy man on the side of the road with nothing to eat, no rock on which to lay his head, and his whole ministry was preaching to those like him about the greatness of God's kingdom, and preaching to those "above" him about the greatness they were missing out on. So often, we Christians forget about this, and we forget to live into the CHRIST part of our name. So maybe this Christmas season instead of focusing on the love and joy and peace that Christ brought to people like us (the modern-day Levites, Pharisees, Sadducees, you name us), we should focus on bringing that love, joy, and peace to the people that Christ lived and breathed with while he was on earth. Those most like him, with no place to lay their head and no food in their stomachs.

http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2009/shane-claiborne-1209

Cut and pasted for your convenience:

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.

The other night I headed into downtown Philly for a stroll with some friends from out of town. We walked down to Penn's Landing along the river, where there are street performers, artists, musicians. We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then there was a preacher. He wasn't quite as captivating as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going to die and go to hell if we don't know Jesus.

Some folks snickered. Some told him to shut the hell up. A couple of teenagers tried to steal the dead body in the coffin. All I could do was think to myself, I want to jump up on a box beside him and yell at the top of my lungs, "God is not a monster." Maybe next time I will.

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, "I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ." A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That's the ugly stuff. And that's why I begin by saying that I'm sorry.

Now for the good news.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice.)

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it... it was because "God so loved the world." That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or because I wanted crowns in heaven... but because he is good. For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey, I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians. We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name. At the core of our "Gospel" is the message that Jesus came "not [for] the healthy... but the sick." And if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.

One of Jesus' most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A Levite, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan... you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I'm sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine... but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch.

It is so simple, but the pious forget this lesson constantly. God may indeed be evident in a priest, but God is just as likely to be at work through a Samaritan or a prostitute. In fact the Scripture is brimful of God using folks like a lying prostitute named Rahab, an adulterous king named David... at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey. Some say God spoke to Balaam through his ass and has been speaking through asses ever since. So if God should choose to use us, then we should be grateful but not think too highly of ourselves. And if upon meeting someone we think God could never use, we should think again.

After all, Jesus says to the religious elite who looked down on everybody else: "The tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you." And we wonder what got him killed?

I have a friend in the UK who talks about "dirty theology" — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man's eyes to heal him. (The priests and producers of anointing oil were not happy that day.)

In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.

It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors... a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

Your brother,

Shane

To Live Is Christ (Paul): Week Six

2009-11-20T08:26:00.000-08:00

First off, thank you all for your prayers and thoughts concerning my dad. He is home from the hospital and doing well. :)

This was our last week of studying Paul for this semester, and it was super fun. We've been doing Paul since August, studying the chronology of his ministries, from the very beginning as a little Jewish school boy to this Wednesday, when he was shipwrecked on the island. We had a lot of fun doing this lesson, and I had a great time teaching it. A great last week of Paul for the next few weeks while we focus on Christmas Unwrapped and Jesus' birthday.

So, keeping in theme with boats and being shipwrecked, I thought, 'hey, let's act this story out'. So, the kids were divided into two teams. They each had to pick one Paul--who got to wear cool reindeer antlers--and Paul was the only person allowed on their boat. I gave each group a cardboard presentation board, some rope, stickers, markers, tape, and paper. My special helper and I got scissors and the kids directed us on what to do. The basic objective was that they had to build and decorate a boat that could carry Paul on his different missionary journeys. This was really fun and the kids loved it! I gave them a few minutes and we had beautiful boats with wonderful names. Paul sat down in the boat, and the other members of the team got to pick some cargo to take with them. They could pick three out of water, food, a blanket, a pillow, and a bible. One group picked food, water, and a blanket. The other picked food, water, and a bible. And the boat was packed and ready to go... But where?

We broke this video up into a few parts. The kids all gathered round as we watched the first part of the video. I didn't tell them which island to go to (there were a few islands around the room). They had to listen to the video, figure out where to go, and then go do the first thing there. So we went to Cyprus first. Paul got a bandaid, and they were able to switch out one of their items for a piece of an anchor (the bible verse). Then, if they didn't have a blanket, they lost an arm (frostbite's no fun!), if they didn't have food, they had to have another person on their boat (famished!), and if they didn't have water, they couldn't speak (their throats were too scorched). So we had some disabilities going on, and then we watched the second part of the video.

So the kids went off to Crete and we played a quick game while they were there, similar to front of the boat, back of the boat. The person that was left standing got to pick if they wanted to take another piece of cargo on the ship, or take one away from the other team. The kids got the next part of the anchor, and had more disabilities than they could count, and off they went toward the final place, Rome... But then the winds howled, rain poured (from spray bottles, it's a tough world out there!), and their boats were tipped over by the wind (played by Me). They had to "swim" (army crawl) to the nearest island, which happened to be Malta.

So we watched the last part of the video, and we talked about how now, the Maltese people have a huge population of Christians on the island, and it's all because of Paul! Paul probably thought this shipwreck was going to be awful and there was no good from it, but God turned it into good by using it to spread health and Jesus to the people on the island. That was cool!

I showed two That Will Leave A Mark videos, and we talked about what kind of mark we thought this event left on Paul. The kids thought it probably strengthened his faith. Then I asked the kids to think about the event that made the biggest mark on their own lives. We had little brothers and sisters, deaths of grandparents, first days of schools, getting punched... All of these things that happened. We talked about how these marks can be good or bad, and when they're good, it's easy to navigate. But what do we do when it's bad? When we have shipwrecks in our lives, how do we swim to shore. I had the kids close their eyes and go back to that memory and to look around the room, and see if they could find Jesus. When they did, we talked about how when future things make their "mark" on our lives, we should look around and find Jesus, and He'll direct us where to go.

The verse for the week: "We have this hope as an anchor, firm and secure." - Hebrews 6:19

Next semester we'll be talking about the different Pauline epistles. We'll spend two weeks on each of the different Pauline epistles to the churches. What I would like to do is have someone come in that has been to each of the cities those churches are at (Colossus, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica/Salonia/Thessaloniki, Galatia, Rome, Philippi) and bring pictures and memories so the kids can see that each one of these epistles was written to places that actually exist. I think that would really bring home the realness of the bible to them, and I would love to be able to experience that with them. So, if any of you know anyone who has been to any of these cities, please let me know :)

To Live is Christ (Paul): Weeks Five

2009-11-20T08:13:00.000-08:00

We've done a lot of studying Paul this year, and will be next year too. Last week, Paul and Silas were in jail for telling people about Jesus. The kids acted the story out while making chains out of fruit roll ups. It was really fun. I gave the kids 7 minutes to build a make-shift jail out of chairs, blankets, whatever they could find in that room (it's amazing what kids can find when you tell them to build something!). I should have taken a picture of this jail--it was amazing! I would never, ever want to be inside of this jail. We stuck a Paul and a Silas inside the jail, tied their hands and feet together, and made them sit there while we read the story.

In the story, Paul and Silas are walkin' around, tellin' people about Jesus and are thrown in jail. While they're in jail, they still talk about Jesus (some nerve, eh?). Then, one day as they're praying in their jail cells, the chains fall off their arms and legs, the door to the jail cell opens, and they're free. But what do they do? Nothing. They sit there, and continue to pray. At this point, the kids and I are both going "huh?"

So, we find out as we read that the jailer comes, sees that Paul and Silas stayed, and is blown away by how they followed the rules (basically. See, parents, this is a lesson you can get into!) So he takes them home, and Paul and Silas convert his entire family into Christians. Talk about some good repercussions for obeying the rules!

So, the kids ate their chains, we talked about Paul and Silas, we freed Paul and Silas from jail, and then we showed another "That Will Leave A Mark!" video. We talked about how Paul made his mark by staying in the prison and then converting the jailer's family. Then we talked about what the kids can do to make a mark in the lives of the people around them. They loved the makeshift jail!

Wired for Worship: Week Three

2009-11-04T07:37:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest challenges of Children's Ministry (or any ministry, really) is finding how to incorporate God's truth with current day to day affairs in a way that the kids really understand. The goal is to get the kids to the point where they can do that themselves--find God's Word in their every day life and live into it.

This weekend was Halloween. The kids came in on Sunday sugar-hyped, wishing they were home to eat their candy and reliving their nights as Hannah Montana, a hamburger, a SWAT team member, etc, etc. The difficulty is how to take that hype for Halloween and turn it into a hype for Jesus and a desire to learn.

We played this video and asked the kids how they saw the people worshiping in the video. People worship in all different ways--some raise their hands, some sway, some sing, some pray--but God wants one thing from all worshipers. He wants us to worship him in truth (John 4:24). Worshiping in truth means that we take off our masks (hey, halloween!) and come before God as our real selves, and we don't hide anything. Then we played a song for the kids and let them worship their God in truth!

Some quotes from the kids:

"I really love that I don't have to go to school on Sunday. I can just be with God and love him all day long and think about him all day long."

"When you worship God and you can just give Him your heart, it just makes you feel better on the inside and everything you worry about just goes away."

Hopefully I'll get some audio up of what the kids said, and some pictures of them worshiping. The lesson was really powerful, moreso for the teachers than the kids, I think!

On Your Mark: Catalyst (Andy Stanley)

2009-10-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I went to Atlanta for the Catalyst 2009 conference. Catalyst is a huge conference for church leaders to go and hear from incredible speakers who are most definitely ordained by God. There are 10 sessions with about 8-9 different speakers, and each one leaves you scratching your head, humbled, and on fire for God. The theme for this year's Catalyst was "On Your Mark". Andy Stanley started us off with a really amazing talk.

"What man is a man who does not leave the world better?" This quote is taken from Kingdom of Heaven, but is so completely relevant to our lives that it's impossible to get away. Everyone wants to leave a mark. Andy even made the point that if we're leaders, we HAVE to want to leave a mark. That's what makes a leader. And the truth is, every single one of us leaves a mark. But which mark do we leave?

Things come up. That's just life. It would be so boring if every day things were exactly the same. A phone call, a conversation, a bank account statement... All of these things happen, and suddenly, we're all in the middle of a "crisis" point. We have decisions to make, things to say and do, and all of a sudden, we have a mark to make. And the most troubling part of it all, as a leader and as a follower, is that you never know where that mark is. Every single one of us is going to touch someone or hit someone in some way, and we're going to make our mark. The problem is that we don't know when that's going to happen. We won't see our greatest opportunity until after it's past us. Have you ever had someone come back to you later and said, "you know, you really stuck with me when you said that?" And you're completely floored. To you, it was just a casual comment or compliment. But to them, it was the world. It changed who they are and how they think, and a light bulb all of a sudden went off. And maybe if you'd known that ahead of time, you would have planned it out better, or maybe been too scared to say anything at all. So maybe that's a blessing. Either way, we don't know when our mark is being made, and a lot of the times, if we were going to pick where our mark was going to be made, we'd pick a different moment.

In the story of Joshua, Joshua gives his people three commands (Joshua 23-24). He tells them to cling to the Lord you're God. He tells them to love God. And then, as our kids could tell you, in Joshua 24:15, he says, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua tells his people to follow the Lord, love the Lord, and build their house to SERVE the Lord. And to this day, people are reading Joshua's words and following what he said. That was a mark made. And the thing is, we all have a mark to leave. But we need to make THE mark, not A mark. YOUR mark, not a mark. We all have a specific mark to leave, and we all have a choice to make.

¹³ Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?"

¹⁴ "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, "What message does my Lord have for his servant?"

¹⁵ The commander of the LORD's army replied, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy." And Joshua did so.

-Joshua 5:13-15

The funny thing about this passage to me is the angel's answer. "Are you for us or our enemies?" Joshua asks. That seems like a pretty easy question, right? You've got two choices. 50% chance. But, you know, in pure God-fashion, the angel throws us for a loop and says "neither." What? You're not for me, or for my enemies? Suddenly, Joshua realizes something. God's not FOR us. We're FOR God. Now, I'm not saying that God's not for us and that He doesn't fight for us, because absolutely He does. But the point is, the angel didn't come down to earth to make Joshua's mark. Joshua was on the earth to make God's mark. God didn't come to play a role in my story. I was created to make a mark in HIS story.

And Joshua's response is just so perfect. He humbled himself, fell down, and asked, "what message does my Lord have for his servant?" He is out to serve the Lord. He hears what the Lord's messenger is saying, and he fires right back, "what message does my Lord have for me?" "What can I do?" His life is about serving God. How many of us can say that and mean it? I think we all want to mean it, but how many of us can actually say it and mean it and take it and make it our own?

Andy Stanley said his father had one quote that hung on his wall in his office the entire time he was growing up. "God takes full responsibility for the life wholly devoted to him." It's not about who is for or against you, but it's about who you are for. Yes, there are consequences to following God. There are consequences to not following God too. We have responsibilities and consequences in this wonderful relationship we have with our Lord. God calls us to do these crazy things that are sometimes not fun. But our responsibility is to be obedient to God and to trust him with the consequences. The thrill of life that comes from knowing Jesus is so great and so wonderful, but it comes with great responsibility. The responsibility of being obedient to the King we know. And sometimes that obedience is blind and hard and just plain not fun. But we have to trust our God to take that obedience, and to take those consequences, and make them what is good and holy. Our responsibility is to obey and to trust. And that's how we can make our mark.

It all boils down to three things. 1) You don't know the biggest thing God will do for you. You don't know how He's going to use you or change you. You don't know the biggest blessing He will give you. You don't know where your mark is going to be. You don't know if it's going to be a little thing, or a big thing. But it's there. God didn't create an idle creation. He created an active, fast-paced creation that seeks to glorify Him and change the world and mix it up. 2) You don't want to miss it. Our relationship with Christ is so thrilling, and the plan he has for our lives is so, so big. That mark He has planned for us is so great and so big that we don't want to miss it. We don't want to miss our chance. 3) Living to make my mark is too small a thing to give my life to. God's mark is worth giving your life to.

All of this left me wondering... Am I doing everything I can do for God? Am I sold out to Jesus? Am I living my life wondering if God is FOR me, or am I living my life knowing that it's FOR Him? Am I expecting God to be a part of my story, or am I living it to be a part of His? Where is my mark, and am I ready to make it?

To Live is Christ (Paul): Week Four

2009-10-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone. The new has come!" - 2 Corinthians 5:17

Studying Paul has been really good for the kids, and for me to be able to see how much these kids retain and how well they're learning and adapting our lessons to their lives. We start every lesson with a review of the previous lessons. It's been four weeks of lessons (over a six week time frame), and it still amazes me that the kids can tell me details of what we talked about the first time we talked. I ask them about how Paul grew up, and they tell me the bible verse, and then about the clothes he wore and what he had to do. And they seamlessly ease into the following stories. This week was interesting because it was the mark of the turn from Saul to Paul. When the kids were explaining, one of them said, "Well Saul was a bad guy and was trying to stone Stephen!" Another girl corrected him and said, "No, he wasn't a bad guy. He was just a guy that did a bad thing. He didn't know about Jesus yet!" It was really cool to see them thinking on that level and helping each other in that respect.

We started are lesson by breaking into three groups. The first group read in Genesis about when Abram and Sarai's names were changed to Abraham and Sarah's, and when Simon's name was changed to Peter. The other two groups read about the time where Saul's name becomes Paul. One group had the question of why, and the other group had the question of when. We went over those two as a big group, and then we talked about names in the Old Testament. We talked about how a long time ago, people named their children based on the meaning of the name, not on how pretty the names were. The first group presented what they found out about Abram, Sarai, and Simon, and then we talked as a group about the importance of names.

Here are what the kids came up with:

You can't just say "hey you" and still be polite.
It's how you can tell people apart.
It helps you know who you are.
When somebody knows your name you're better behaved

After all these, we talked about how every name has a meaning, and in this time period, people named their children after how they wanted their children to perceive themselves. For instance, how Jesus' name means "Salvation". I talked about my name, and how it means "God's gift", and how the reason I was named that was because my parents wanted me to know that I was "God's gift" to them. We talked about how God referred to Saul by Paul from then on because he wanted Saul to know that his identity was new, now that he was in Christ. We talked about how Saul and Paul are the same name (Saul is Hebrew, Paul is Roman), and how the changing of it also meant that Christ wasn't just for the Hebrews, but for everyone.

I'd done some research and looked up the meaning of all the kids' games, so we spent a lot of time playing Memory with their names. They were in teams and had to pick the matches. It was really fun, and the thing that kept the kids' attention was the wait to find out what their names meant. Then we cleaned up, and they all got a cookie if they could come up and tell me one thing they learned and what their name means.

We talked about what it means to be a new person in Christ, and the bible verse for the week, and that was that!

Wired for Worship: Week Two

2009-10-25T13:07:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday we picked up on our worship lessons with some talking about who God is and what he does and why we were made to worship Him. The kids started out by creating things out of play dough, and then we talked about how God created every little thing in this world, and how He created the whole world. We talked about some things we know God to be, and then we talked about what worship is.

We've been defining worship as "our response to God's greatness". It's more than that, for sure, but on an elementary level, it gets the point across. The kids pay a lot more attention to us adults than I thought they did! We talked about how we see people worshiping upstairs, and why they might worship different ways. The most common answers were that people close their eyes and put their hands up in the air. One little girl noticed that the music team likes to clap and "jump around". We talked about why they do the things they do... How sometimes they try to reach God, or want to focus on him, and how the bible says we should be UNDIGNIFIED for Christ. We read the passage in Matthew that says even if we don't praise him, the rocks will cry out. And talked about how our God deserves a lot of praise! And then we played a song, and let the kids worship however they wanted to. Some danced. Some prayed. Some waved their hands in the air with their eyes closed. One little girl swayed. It was adorable, and really cool to see the kids praising God in their own way.

I think the coolest part of working with kids is that moment where you see what they've been learning hit what they're doing. Teaching the kids about worship has been really amazing--they've really soaked up who God is and why we should praise him, and I've seen a difference in how they're responding in church and in the lesson. They seem to be building a real reverence for the Lord, and it's really cool to watch. Looking around and seeing the kids with their hands raised and their eyes closed singing songs to God was really amazing, and I hope they'll never lose that, and that our church can be one that continues to foster that in our children.

Wired for Worship: Week One

2009-10-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

The idea of "worship" has come up a lot in my own life lately, and it's threaded into Holy Cross and the kids there, and I think it's really cool. One of my favorite parts about being in Kids ministry is how much God grows me and changes me while He teaches the kids through me. I'm both taught and teaching, and it's what makes my "job" (really? that old Mark Twain quote floats through my head) so enjoyable. Life with Christ isn't easy, but it's certainly exhilarating! So, lately the threads have all been weaved to worship. It's so rarely studied in our culture and the question is hardly ever asked, but what is worship? I don't even think I've begun to uncover the answer to that question.

The kids have started wanting to stay upstairs for the music (and even the sermon sometimes... tell me that's not cool!) on Sunday mornings. We're all for letting the kids worship upstairs and engage in the music and the prayers, but kids are kids and sometimes the fidget fairy comes and takes over. So the question was, how do we ingrain in our children the idea of what worship is, why we do it? How do we teach them to worship the God of the universe? I'll confess that at first my thought process was, "I have to teach on worship? Uhhh." Not anymore.

I went off to Catalyst last week, and Louie Giglio was talking about the magnificence of God, and the heart that worships Him. He posed a question along the lines of, "what would you like to see happen in your church, that if it happened, would completely change the face of your ministry?" I thought about the question long and hard, and the answer was simple. I want to see our kids actively worshiping God. I don't want them to just be bystanders and students of the Word, I want them to be living, breathing worshipers of who God is and what He can do in their lives. But how do we get there? How do we foster that in our children?

I picked up this book called "Wired for Worship" by Louie Giglio. He's got little devotionals that go with it, where he takes a Psalm and you have to circle the characteristics of God. I started doing that, and it hit me. Of COURSE, in order to worship we have to KNOW the God we're worshiping. People worship all sorts of things. If you want to find out what you value most and what you worship most, look at how you spend your time. You worship the place you spend your time. With that in mind, we realize that none of us really KNOW the God we worship, or at least not the way we should. So, before we can teach the kids to worship God, we have to teach them who God is and why we should worship Him.

Yesterday, we worked on finding out who God is. I started out by asking, "Who is God?" The kids had a hard time answering that question (wouldn't you?). Then we played two songs. The first was Wonderful Maker and the second was You Are Holy. We looked at each of the characteristics of God in the song (father, counselor, Emmanuel, friend, savior, Messiah, Living God, Maker) and looked up bible verses that went with each of them. By the end, the kids were so impressed by who God is that they could hardly contain their excitement. Then, we defined worship as being our response to God's greatness. The last line of You Are Holy is, "and I will live my life for you." We talked about how THAT is true worship.

I'm excited about where this season is going and how the kids (and myself) are going to learn to worship God in a new, powerful, more genuine way. Louie talked about how we have to show the face of Christ on our faces. Show people what heaven looks like through our faces. He used the example of Extreme Home Makeover. After everybody yells, "MOVE THAT BUS!" what do you see first? You don't see the house. You see the people's faces. You see the house pictured on the faces of the family. And that's how we should be. If the magnificence of Jesus Christ and the magnificence of heaven were on the faces of our kids, that would change the face of our ministry.

To Live is Christ (Paul): Week Three

2009-10-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

"He has called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light." -1 Peter 2:9

Every Wednesday night when I leave church, I have an overwhelming sense of peace and excitement. These kids are incredible, and I love their passion for the Lord and how they are striving to know more and be better. Sometimes I feel like if I just stood in front of the group and told them what verses to read, they would go into it with lots of excitement. I could give the most monotone lesson, and these kids would still be on fire for Jesus. It's so cool watching the Holy Spirit radiate within each of them, and seeing the growth! They come back to church every Wednesday night ready to recite bible verses from weeks ago (and without any reward, other than an awesome high five). They are just the coolest kids I know and are really doing things for the Kingdom. I'm so proud of them.

We start off each week with a simple review of the week before (and what is important up to there). I am constantly surprised how much the kids take in and retain each week--they are walking SpongeKids and should be a show on Nickelodeon. Regardless, we went over the first week (Saul's upbringing), and talked about how Saul had to wear rabbi gear and how he was raised to say his prayers, and do all sorts of religious things. Then we talked about the Stoning of Stephen, and how Saul was there, giving approval on and URGING for Stephen's death. The kids were a little shaky about WHY Stephen was stoned (apart from just being a christian... why that was a bad thing), so before we started the lesson, we went over how important it was in a Jewish culture not to blaspheme God, and how the Jewish followers thought it was blasphemy for Jesus to say He was the son of God (even though we all know it to be true). And on to our lesson, we go.

Lesson: We read Acts 9:1-9, but in short little doses. First, we read Acts 9:1-2. For some reason, the verses tripped me up when I was reading them at home, so I made the kids read them a few times to get the message. We talked about what Saul asked the high priest to do (and who the high priest was), and why Saul would ask such a thing. The kids had great answers. We summarized up the verses by saying that Saul asked the really important guy for letters to arrest people of "The Way". The kids were funny because they knew who we were talking about, but when I asked them who "The Way" is, they didn't know how to explain it! So we did a little call back to John 14:6, and talked about how Jesus is "the way, the truth, and the life". It was funny watching their faces. One little girl was really impressed! She thought it was clever of them to call themselves that.

Activity #1: I had the kids pretend to be the high priest and write letters to the churches. This was one of those activities that I didn't really have a reason for doing, it just felt like it should be done, and it gave some time for intrapersonal/linguistic learning styles to shine. So, we wrote letters... One of them says, "Dear churches, please help Saul arrest and kill any followers of "The Way" because they are lying about our God!" (We had to go over the idea that the Jewish people believe in the same God, they just don't believe in Jesus. Thankfully, our Sunday lesson was on The Trinity, so the kids got it). I had all of the kids sign their names and seal their letters, and hand them to our makeshift Saul for the day.

Lesson: We then read Acts 9:3-7. Saul acted out each part as we read, and it was pretty funny. We took it verse by verse. I explained that the light was really bright, and we talked about times when it's been way too bright outside. One child even said that sometimes, when it's so bright outside, she goes blind for a minute. Inside, I'm thinking "oh you just wait!". Then we talked about how God called out to Saul, saying "Saul! Saul!" and how he knew Saul's name. I asked the kids how they would feel when they heard God calling them after what they had done last week. Some said surprised, some said awful, but one little girl (who is 5!) said, "I would feel really scared because I hurt God and God is really powerful and what if he was mad at me?" I thought it was incredible insight! I asked the question, "How did Saul persecute God?" And the kids gave me a few answers --> killing his people, speaking bad about his people, not believing in Him. We talked about how the Bible says that ANYTHING you do to the people around you, you do to God. So if you love the people around you, you love God. To which one of the boys replied, very solemnly, "so if you stone the people around you, you stone God." Ouch and Bingo. These kids are really thinking about this God stuff!! I had the kids scream really loud for the sound the other people heard, and then we talked about how those people hadn't seen what Saul did, and how hard it might be for Saul to explain it to others.

Activity #2: Charades. We sent three kids out of the room, and as a group, came up with a charade. The first child got up, and performed the charade (an elephant swinging from a rope and picking vegetables) for the second child, who in turn, performed it for the third, and down to the last one. We talked about how hard it was for the last child to describe what she saw--especially when it seemed so strange! And there was that point!

Lesson: We read Acts 9:8-9. We talked about a few things here, best summarized:

One of the reasons Saul might have been the only one to see/hear God is that the people with Saul had letters to arrest any Christians they came across. If they didn't turn and believe in God just like Saul did, they could have arrested Saul. So in a way, God was protecting him.
God used light because God IS light. People who don't know Jesus are living in darkness, but God called out to Saul, and used his light, to make Saul see how great he is.
God used light to blind Saul so Saul would have to rely on God, and other people (how hard when you're traveling!)

Activity #3: Before we started the activity, I told the kids the bible verse for the day, which is the last half of 1 Peter 2:9. Then, we cranked up some "Marvelous Light" by Charlie Hall, and I taught the kids the motions. They LOVED this song, especially because of all of the really active motions you can do with it. And it helped them remember the word Marvelous Light, so I was happy with it!

Activity #4: Our trusty-dusty timeline! We did it as a group this time. We made six squares on the piece of paper, and on the back, listed the five parts of the story we thought were most important. Each child drew in one of the squares, and then another child dictated the words to go with it. We had 1) Saul writes letters asking for help to hurt Christians. 2) Saul goes on a journey. 3) Saul gets spoken to by God and asked why he's hurting Him 4) Saul is blinded 5) Saul needs God and other people. Then in the sixth, we wrote the verse for the week. Taped it up to the timeline, and we're good to go.

Bible Verse: Then we worked on learning our bible verse. We did it in a before and after kind of way, where the kids shouted back and forth. One group would shout "HE CALLED US OUT OF DARKNESS" and the other group would shout "AND INTO HIS MARVELOUS LIGHT!" Then they all recited it together. We played a game where we threw the shoe around... We had a child sit in the mushpot, and whenever the shoe was thrown to someone on the outside of the circle, they had to recite the verse. If they recited it correctly, mushpot person would finish it by saying "1 Peter 2:9". If they recited it incorrectly, mushpot person had to say the verse to get out of the mushpot, and they would switch places. It lasted for a bit, but eventually everyone outside of the mushpot knew the verse, and by that time, I've done my job and the game is shot. I had all of the kids line up and individually tell me the bible verse for the week. Flying colors!

This lesson couldn't have been better timed, and I know that was God and not me. The parents all came down just as I was wrapping up (we played Freeze Dance to Marvelous Light and the kids loved it) and their kids were excited, excited!! I was really glad I did the first activity (writing letters) because it helped enforce the God protecting us point at the end of the lesson (which God revealed to me as I was speaking. SO COOL). All in all, great Wednesday night, and the kids LOVED it. Next week we're off for Catalyst, but the following week, we're going to see Ananais.

Multiple Intelligences

2009-09-26T06:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/articles/7_ways.htm

I was re-introduced to this theory last spring as I was taking classes on Child Psychology, as well as Educative Process in Technology. Both classes brought up this idea of multiple intelligences, and it intrigued me, but I was never sure how to incorporate all of the intelligences into one (and had never really tried). However, for some reason it sparked in me when I started planning for the fall semester, so I've tried actively to tie them together for each lesson on Wednesday nights.

The whole idea of the theory is that kids learn best when the lessons are presented to them in different ways. There are all sorts of studies out there that say if a child repeats something eight times, he/she'll retain it. I don't want the kids in our ministry to just come to church and leave--I want them to retain all of the information we give them, and then use that information to impact their lives. And the way we do that is through repetition, repetition, repetition. Sounds boring, doesn't it? Well, not if they don't realize you're repeating it! I've been planning my lesson trying to get each of the 7 spokes of the multiple intelligences in there, knowing full well that our kids are diverse and were created for their own specific purposes (PSK).

The different learning styles are helpful to know when you're teaching your kids anything, or trying to help your child's teacher understand your child more. Here's a brief description:

linguistic - these kids learn best through words. reading, writing... one of the more traditional types of learning.
logical-mathematical - learn best through formulas, logic, math... the other traditional type of learning.
spatial - visual, so they'll learn from flow charts and presentations.
bodily-kinesthetic - learn through movement, so games, active participation, hands on.
interpersonal - learn through talk with others, small-group cooperation.
intrapersonal - learn through examining themselves, alone time
musical -learn through music.
(and some theories add in naturalistic) - learn through experiencing.

As I've been planning the lessons and trying to incorporate all of them (which I've done pretty well), I've realized how resistant I am to the musical one. I think it's a little bit ironic, since kids LOVE music. I am not musical and am self-conscious about my voice and my inability to make music, but I want these kids to learn the best they can and I want to use music to teach them, so it's something I need to pray through and ask for God's healing (?) in it all. I never thought children's ministry would be a place where God would stretch me, but it most certainly is. It's funny how much my kids teach me about myself, and how many things in my own life God brings up through teaching them (and their teaching me!)

To Live is Christ (Paul): Week Two

2009-09-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

"Christ came into the world to save sinners--of which I am the worst!" - 1 Timothy 1:15

I left church Wednesday night feeling really encouraged about the kids at Holy Cross and what they're learning, and moreso, how much fun they're having learning it. The kids are really passionate about Jesus and what He's doing and what He's done, and I can see in their faces and their actions how much they've changed and how their relationships with God are going. This week, one child told me that she wanted to start praying every day before she went to bed and when she woke up (we talked last week about how Saul did that growing up--I guess it had been on her mind!), and a few of them came into the program spouting off the bible verse from the week before (as well as the stuff they're memorizing Sunday mornings!) All of the kids remembered the bible verse from the week before--even our youngest! One of the kids brought a friend, and one of the parents told me there had been waterworks last week because a child didn't finish her homework (and the Mom wouldn't let her come to church without her homework done). It's great to see God moving in these kids lives--I can see a marked difference in the activities we do. Where a Wednesday night program used to be a ten minute lesson and thirty minutes of games and activities, I've found that recently, we haven't been doing any games that weren't biblical related, and the kids are having even more fun! We're teaching for a whole hour and a half to two hours, and the kids are LOVING it. And I am too. It's such a blessing to see how much they're learning each week at church, and what they're inspiring in their families at home.

So, keeping with our lesson on Saul, this week was Week 2, which was a more difficult lesson. The Stoning of Stephen. I was somewhat anxious about how to get this lesson across in a way that the kids could understand both the seriousness of it all, and at the same time, not go home scared out of their minds. I think the lesson came across well. The kids were sobered about life afterwards, but not discouraged, which was really good.

We opened with a review of last week's lesson (I really need to be more diligent about opening in prayer!). I opened up the timeline and the kids went crazy about what we learned about last week. I think they did my entire lesson in the three minutes I gave them to review.

Lesson: We cracked open the bibles and read Acts 6:8-15. We talked about what the issue was, and what the Jewish council was doing (lying to kill Stephen because they were scared) and about why that was such a big deal. The kids all agreed that it was not good what they were doing (one child even said, "I don't know why they were so scared! They should have just put it in God's hands!"). We then read Acts 7:54-60, and we talked about what it meant to be stoned, and how much it would have hurt, and how it was a really awful way to die, but Stephen had so much faith in God he did it anyway. Then we stopped and read Acts 8:1, and talked about what it meant that Saul urged the Jews on.

Activity #1: Stoning of "Stephen". We pulled out the cotton balls, some duct tape, and a trash bag. We cut a hole in the top of the trash can for "Stephen" to stick her little head out, then taped the trash bag (sticky side out). The kids circled around her and took turns throwing "stones" (cotton balls) at her, seeing if they would stick. Hindsight is 20/20 and I should have picked an older child to put in the center because "Stephen" got scared and started crying :-/ We calmed her down though, and I used it as a teaching lesson. We talked about how the kids felt when they were throwing the cotton balls at "Stephen", and how they felt when "Stephen" started crying. And we talked to "Stephen" and asked her if she'd done anything wrong, and what it was like having the "stones" thrown at her when she'd done nothing wrong. Then we talked about how it was different with Saul because in our game, we didn't want to hurt "Stephen", but these people did. We talked about how Saul urged them on and how he wanted to hurt Stephen, and how awful that made him seem. The kids were really sobered by this exercise.

Activity #2: We added the next week to our timeline. The kids did a great job figuring out the most important parts of the story. I had a great helper who made sure that we added Saul into the mix instead of focusing on Stephen. The kids also drew a picture of Saul throwing stones at Stephen. We taped them to the timeline and talked about them. The kids were all really excited to see what goes next on the chart!

Activity #3: We had stones left over from VBS decoration, so we pulled them out for an activity. All of the kids sat quietly and we thought of people we know who get persecuted, just like Stephen did. The kids all thought of somebody they know at their schools, the gym, the church, wherever they go who gets picked on or maybe doesn't have a lot of friends. They wrote the name of the person on the stone in sharpie, and then we held the stones in our hands and prayed for the person. It was really cool hearing all of the kids praying for the kids at their schools. They took the rocks home with instructions to put them somewhere they would see them, and when they did see them, to pray for the person on the rock. The kids were really excited about this activity and all said they would pray lots for the person on their rock :)

Activity #4: This activity worked with the help of a little bribery! We read the bible verse to memorize this week (all of the verses are verses Paul penned), and wrote it down on a big piece of paper, and set it in the middle of the circle. We played a game called "popcorn". Generally, the game works where you try and count as high as you can. However, you can't premeditate who says what number, and if two people say a number at the same time (or count out of turn), you have to start over again. We did it with the bible verse, and it was great! The kids had the bible verse repeated multiple times! I told them if they got through it, they all would get a cookie. And then I added to the mix and made them stand in line to get their cookies. They all had to repeat the bible verse to me while in line to get a cookie. All of them passed with flying colors, and one of the Moms even got in line and memorized the bible verse for a cookie! It was really great, hearing all of the little voices memorizing God's word.

The kids are really impressing me with how much they're learning and how on fire they are about Jesus! I'm having a blast planning the lessons, and I really feel like this semester is ordained by God! I can't wait to get into the next two weeks, which are about Saul's conversion, and talk about what it means to be a new creation! I think the kids are going to be really blown away by how DIFFERENT Paul is than Saul. I can't wait to see their reactions!

To Live is Christ (Paul): Week One

2009-09-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

"Remain faithful to what you have been taught!" - 2 Timothy 3:14

We started our semester-long lesson on Paul last week, and it started out awesome. The whole focus of the semester will be on being a new creation (after PSK over the summer, this seems like an awesome next step and I'm excited where God is taking us!) and there seems to be no better person to illustrate how different life with Christ is than the apostle Paul. And so, for the next 12 weeks (or so), we'll be studying a different part of Paul's life, starting with his birth, and ending with his death (and as much as we know about in between!). We're also trying to incorporate as many of the different learning styles as we can into each lesson--it's been a challenge, but the reward has been great!

Week one, we talked about the beginnings of Paul's life. I've been doing the Beth Moore study "To Live is Christ" and got a lot of my information from that. The kids LOVED this lesson! I thought for a moment that some of them might actually go subscribe to Judaism if we weren't careful!

The Lesson: When the kids walked in, we started out by telling them that this semester we'd be learning about Saul. I was shocked to find that most of them didn't know who Saul was! (One of the girls talked about King Saul, and I was impressed by that, but alas, wrong Saul!) So, we started out with Jewish traditions. The first thing we talked about was how much Saul's father wanted him to be a rabbi (as a Pharisee), and what a Jewish child went through when on that track. We started out with talking about how a five year old would need to know the torah, and have it memorized, and then worked into dressing like one of the Jews of the time. We made our own yarmulkes (yamakas) out of paper plates and markers (and talked about the meaning of the yarmulkes, which the kids maintained!), put on the tzitzits ( tassels around the shoulders ), and then put on the phylacteries (boxes of God's word over the forehead and the heart). The kids LOVED this portion and asked a lot of questions!

Activity #1: We had two sets of Jewish gear (yarmulkes, tzitzits, and phylacteries) and put together an obstacle course. The kids had to keep the jewish gear on throughout the entire obstacle course. Inside their phylacteries (Styrofoam cups), was the bible verse for the week. The team that won was the team who had every player go through the obstacle course (derobing, and rerobing) and had the entire bible verse for the week written down. The kids loved it, and boy did they learn the verse!

Activity #2: We have an ongoing timeline for the kids to work on throughout the study. The kids are separated into two groups -- writers and drawers. One group draws a picture of the lesson, and the other group writes a summary. The kids have to talk about the lesson first and pick out the most important points. They really seem to like this activity, and it's great to watch them get so excited about it. Each week we review the timeline up to that point, and it's great what they've retained.

Activity #3: Memory Verse game. Each week we spend about twenty minutes going over the memory verse. This week, we played catch. Whenever someone caught the ball, they had to say the memory verse. Then they threw it to the next person. The goal was to give everyone the ball (in an order), and shorten the time it took to go through everyone. The kids finally got it to just over a minute, and every single kid knew the bible verse when they left. It was awesome!

This week was shorter than normal too. We had a party because all of the kids had learned the bible verses over the summer and I'd promised them a party! It was fun having a party the day we learned about Jewish customs!! The kids all seemed to really love the first week! :)

Random Lessons: Tower of Babel

2009-08-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

This was a shorter Sunday lesson plan because we started in the service for some worship. So we only had about twenty minutes of lesson, but it was still good. We had about 12 kids--an even split of boys and girls which worked really well.

The first thing the kids did was open their bibles to Genesis 1:28, which reads, "God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth!" We asked the kids what each of these phrases meant, including what it meant to fill the earth. We talked about why God would want us to fill the earth--if God created a big, gigantic universe for us to live in, why wouldn't he want us to inhabit and enjoy every bit of it. God loves to show off his creation--especially his prize creation, US!

Lesson: We then read in Genesis 11 about the Tower of Babel. We stopped every few verses to ask questions. We talked about how awesome it was that at one time, everyone in the entire world spoke the same language. We talked about how that would make everything a lot easier than it is now--easier to play, easier to communicate, easier to tell people about Jesus. Then we read the part about how the people built the tower to be closer to God, and how back then, people thought if they could be closer to God, they became more like God. And how they wanted to do things to be like God so they could be God. Then, we read about how the people said they wanted to build the tower so that they wouldn't be spread out. DUN DUN DUN! We talked about how the people were completely disobeying God! God wanted them to fill the earth, and they were trying to not do what God said! We talked about the consequence of their disobedience--that they now had a lot of languages and were going to have a hard time understanding each other. We brought a few kids up and had them speak gibberish, and all the kids laughed. Then we asked the kids what they would do if they showed up at school and only one other person spoke their language... Who would they befriend first? They said the person that spoke the same language as them because friendship is all about understanding each other. We talked about how at the Tower of Babel, people felt the same way, and that's how certain languages got isolated into certain areas. Then we asked the kids: Didn't God do what he said he would do? Aren't people filling the earth now? They all answered yes, so we led to the follow up question... Wouldn't it have been easier for the people to just obey God, since his will was done anyway? YES.

Activity: We split the boys and girls up into two teams, and blindfolded one girl, and one boy. We made a rope circle somewhere in the room, and placed kids from both teams around the room. The kids had to try and direct the blindfolded child to the rope circle, but the opposite sex team tried to distract the child. We timed them to see how long it took them to get to the rope circle and talked about how hard it is to give good information and hear good information when people are speaking differently and distracting you. We talked about how the Tower of Babel showed that disobeying God only made things harder for us.

Camp Araminta: Where Faith Takes Flight

2009-08-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a week long "vacation" to volunteer at our local Anglican overnight summer camp. The camp ranges from kids going into 4th grade to going into 8th grade as campers, then a flight crew (which are campers that help out with things) who are going into 9th and 10th grade, and then CITs who are going into 11th and 12th grade. I was a counselor, with 10 4th-6th grade girls and a CIT in my cabin. It was a joy and a blessing to be able to be there this week, and I know that God moved in huge ways this week, and these children's lives are going to be blessed because of it.

The week is full of lots of fun things to do: archery, canoeing, funny skits and staff videos, indoor/outdoor games, the MUDBOWL (basically a huge field of mud where the kids can play fun games and get really dirty), dirty games (with pudding and sardines and YUCK!), scavenger hunts, counselor hunts, all camp Clue games, great box races, and all sorts of really fun things! The kids love it and have a blast!

My favorite thing about Camp is the spiritual atmosphere of it all. There's absolutely no hiding why we're at camp: for Jesus. Every camper, every counselor, every parent that walks through those doors knows it. From starting every morning with morning prayer, to program, to prayers before food, to devotions, we're centered in the love of Christ, and that's something kids desperately need. This year, our program time was amazing. We started in a big group with all of the kids singing songs (which nearly blew me away! If you've never had a taste of heaven, try being in a room with 4th-8th graders lifting their hands and singing to our Lord!) and then we split up into two groups on the same track. This year, the track had a different word each day: good, escape, together, different, tell. We talked about how God made us to be a good creation, how when we sinned he planned our escape, how the Christian walk is one that we're called to be on together, and how we need to look different, and how to tell others about the amazing love we have in Christ. The kids really loved it and seemed to get it!

One of my favorite parts of camp is cabin time. I love having devotionals with my girls before bed. This year, we were kind of scattered but it was so good! The first night, we read Psalm 139. But then I lost the sheet of questions, so the other nights we talked about other things. We talked about how God created us each with gifts and we have to find our purpose in him. After this, the kids were really into gifts and actually asked to go deeper into that, so the next day we did one of the activities from PSK 1 and tried to help kids find their gifts. The last day was by far my favorite day of camp.

Friday is always River Day. You go down to the river and play in the sand and in the water and it's just great fun! Then we came back, went to town (to get ice cream! yum!) and went on a scavenger hunt and went swimming. After dinner we went in for our last program time. it was amazing. We were talking about telling every nation and every tribe about Jesus, and how ALL nations praise him. And we played the song "He Reigns" by Newsboys to a slideshow of different people all over the world praising God. The most amazing thing was that the kids watched during the verses, but during the chorus, I heard little voices all singing, it's all God's children singing glory, glory, hallelujah, He reigns up to our God. Hands raised, voices lifted, with no words on the screen and nobody egging them on. These kids were doing it voluntarily and in the moment, moved by the Spirit. And I sat there and could feel heaven. I had a moment where I actually thought, "okay, God, take me away" because the glory of it all was just too incredible.

We had a friday night campfire and say-so, where kids could get up and say whatever they wanted about what God did this week at camp. A lot of times, these turn to "I thank God Suzie wore her spiderman shirt because it led to this and it was really funny!" but this year, we didn't have a single silly one. We had kids stand up and talk about how they wanted to read the bible more, how they were going to skip TV to be with God, how they were going to do a book report on the Bible, how they were going to write a story about Jesus for other people, how they were going to pray more. We had three girls stand up and say they gave their lives to Jesus. Welcome Home, kids. Incredible.

I felt a nudging by the Holy Spirit that night to share my testimony with the girls in my cabin, which was scary because my testimony seems a little too "grown up" for 4th-6th graders, but then I reminded myself that it's about life, and I was their age when I lived it. As I shared, I could see them all crying, absolutely taken aback that these things could happen to someone. It was amazing watching their faces change. One of the girls had been struggling with whether to believe science or God, and after hearing my testimony, she said, "see, I can't argue with that. You shouldn't be here, but you prayed to God, and you are. That's proof." My heart nearly soared hearing that. All of a sudden, it was all worth it. And I'd do it over again in a heartbeat just to help that one little girl. But, testimony sparked lots of crying, lots of sharing of hearts, and it was the most amazing part of the whole week (with He Reigns). We got to know each other, share each other's burdens and struggles, and really counsel the girls that were hurting so, so, so deeply. Share God's truth with them in a way that words couldn't always do, and knowing that we didn't live a perfect life and we came as imperfect, broken people really spoke to them.

It was an incredible week, and I wish some of the kids from my church had been able to make it. But I'm so pumping it up for next year. It's an incredible week of fun, laughter, and love, but most importantly, it's a week of coming so close to Christ that you can feel him on your skin and taste heaven on your lips.

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being. You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth." - Revelation 4:8&11, 5:9-10 (our theme verse for the week)

Cross Movement Kids: Down and Dirty With Jesus

2009-07-22T21:05:00.000-07:00

We've been doing a summer Tuesday morning program a few times this summer. Our theme verse is 1 Corinthians 2:9, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind could ever know what God has prepared for those who love him." We've been doing crazy bible stories and fun games. This week was down and dirty with Jesus.

Preparation: Buy 21 pounds of pudding (at least), relish, ketchup, dishwashing soap, two tarps, some buckets, gummy worms, and the game Twister. Set the tarps down on a grassy area near a hose. We put pool noodles on the sides to make a playing field. Put twister near it, and spray ketchup on the red spaces, relish on the green, dishwashing soap on the blue, and pudding on the yellow. Also, put six gummy worms at the bottom of two of the bowls, and put a generous amount of pudding on top. Tell parents kids need to wear clothes that can get messy, and that they need to bring a change of clothes and a towel.

Lesson: We read the story of when Jesus put mud on the blind man's eyes. We talked about how sometimes people feel like because they did something bad, that's why bad things happen, but how that's not the case. God often uses the bad things to show his glory. We talked about how Jesus used the dirtiest thing (mud!) to make us clean. The kids all got a scoop of pudding and spread it on their faces, just like the blind man. We talked about how nobody but Jesus could make a blind man see, and how God is powerful and he uses even gross stuff for his glory--and a lot of time, it's the gross stuff that makes us see his glory even more! Then we went outside and got GROSS!

Activity #1: Dirty Twister. We had all the kids gather round and played Twister. The fun part of this game was all of the gross things the kids stepped in. When they fell, they fell in lots of fun liquids.

Activity #2: Bobbing for Gummy Worms. We separated the kids into two teams. One at a time they went up and bobbed for one gummy worm. Once they got it, the next person went. The object was to be the first team to do this.

Activity #3: We put pudding in a pie tin. The same groups had to go one at a time and transfer the pudding to a cup.

Activity #4: We poured the remaining pudding on the big tarps (they made a playing field) and some soap and water, as well, and played Front of the Boat, Back of the Boat. One side is the front, one side is the back. The kids have to run from front to back (depending on what you call). The last person there is out. You can also call "Cockroach!" which is where they have to get on their back and flail their arms and legs, "Fish out of water" which is where they get on their stomach and do the same thing (we poured water on them during this time! they loved it!), "marshmallow" which is where they hug their knees to their chest, "Captains Coming!" which is where they salute, and "at ease" which is where they stop saluting. After captains coming, they cant move until someone says at ease. If they do anything wrong or are the last person to do something, they're out. They got soooo messy!

Activity #5: Duck Duck Goose. In pudding and soapy water and grossness.

Activity #6: Human Bowling. We had the kids sit in marshmallow position on one end of the tarp. Then one person would bowl by sliding down the tarp and into the other kids trying to knock them over. They LOVED this game.

Activity #7: Freeze Dance!

Activity #8: Freeze Tag!

Activity #9: We had a coolest hair competition with hair gel, pudding, ketchup, whatever the kids could find!

By this time the kids were really dirty and ready to clean off. We hosed them down, played a few more rounds of duck duck goose on a soap and water tarp, then hosed them off again. We brought the parachute outside and played games with the parachute for about ten minutes before the parents came to pick up their dirty children!

Tip: Review what we talked about again at the end of the day. We didn't do this, and I wish we had. We could have reinforced how much cleaner the kids felt after they'd been through the mess and then been washed off. How Jesus does the same for us. What a gospel presentation this could have been! Hindsight is 20/20.

Joshua, Rahab, and Jericho

2009-07-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." - Joshua 24:15

We only had three kids tonight, but most of the lesson could be taken and used with more than that. Our church was on a trip to Guatemala, and we had some VBSes going on in grandparents' churches, so we were short many a child. Either way, it was a great night, and one of those where there was very little planning on my part, but God showed up! I actually didn't know what we were doing until I got to Walmart to buy supplies (ten minutes beforehand), and only did this story because a little boy in the group asked for it!

Preparation: Before the lesson, I bought little wooden planks (about the size of a bookmark), some magnetic backing, and some stone spraypaint (about ten bucks total, for enough to make six). I spraypainted each of the wooden planks and let them dry during the lesson.

Warm Up: The kids came in, and I asked them if they'd ever read the book "Three Little Pigs". Of course, they all had. We talked about what the three pigs did, and what they built their houses out of (straw, sticks, and stone), and how the big bad wolf came and blew down the first two, but not the stone one, because it was sturdy. We talked about how it's sturdiness made a big difference! Then we did a quick overview of Moses, and how Joshua was the next leader of the Israelites, after Moses died. And how Joshua had to defeat Jericho to get to the promised land.

Lesson: We read snippets of Joshua 2. Basically, the kids got the following story: Joshua sent two people into Jericho to check out the city. They knocked on a sinner, Rahab's, door. She hid them. Other people in the town saw and told the King. The King and everyone in the town were already afraid of the Israelites, so they sent some people to question Rahab. Rahab hid the men upstairs in the attic, but told everyone else they had left. Then she went up and told the men she knew that their God was the true God. They told her they would keep her safe when the walls came crumbling down. She let them out, and remembered their promise.

Interactive Lesson: Then we pulled up a barstool and made a pyramid of paper cups on top of it. We talked about how Joshua heard from God he had to march around the city 6 straight days without making a peep. We talked about how the walls were really really strong, and how the whole city was surrounded by walls that made up houses, and one of those houses was Rahab's. Then we marched around the barstool. Each rotation I asked one of the kids if they wanted to try and scream the wall down yet, and each time they said no. On the seventh time, we all screamed at the paper cups. They moved a bit, but didn't fall until I breathed on them. Then they came crumbling down! The kids were amazed! We put the cups back up and in a circle, and talked about how what really happened was all but one fell, and we flicked all of the cups but one off. We talked about how Rahab's house stood because she knew God and loved God and followed him.

Activity #1: After this, we posed the question, "how can you make your house a house that serves the Lord and is sturdy?" The kids answered with pray, read the bible, put crosses up, follow God, etc. Then, we gave the kids some chairs, piano benches, a coat rack, etc., and a parachute, and told them they had five minutes to make a fort. Kids LOVED this. My helper and I were going to try and destroy their fort (they had to be inside it) with gator balls. All along, my helper was instructed NOT to harm the fort if they were praying, reading the bible, etc inside, only if they were just sitting. The first time, they just sat, and they got RANSACKED. (they loved being destroyed while under the tent!) Then we took them out, gave them another shot, and told them to think about what makes a house sturdy. They weren't quite there yet, so this time they put books to hold things down, and tried to make the structure more sturdy. RANSACKED again. So, we brought the kids closer, and I asked them again what kinds of houses stand firm. The house of the Lord! How can their houses be sturdy? Pray, read the bible, etc. We hinted enough at them that one of the girls got the hint. They built the fort, and it was really cool because she was very adamant on them not making it structurally supported. At one point, one of the kids tried to suggest another way that would have worked wonders, and she said, "we don't need that! we've got God!" This time, they took their bibles in the tent with them. When my helper and I approached, we could hear them praying and reading the bible. We threw the balls, but purposely threw them so they wouldn't put a dent in the tent at all. My helper and I played up that we didn't understand how their tent wasn't falling down. Then we crawled under and asked the kids why their fort stayed strong. All of them answered GOD.

Bible Verse Memorization: After this, we made bible verse cards. We took the stone-painted wooden planks (which were dry now) and wrote in black sharpie the memory verse ("As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." -Joshua 24:15) and put magnetic backing on it. We instructed the kids to put it somewhere their whole family could see it and to implement some of the ways we'd talked about to make their houses strong for the Lord. Then we put the bible verse planks (which looked like bricks, to remind them!) up, and played another game.

Activity #2: We made a strange variation of freeze tag. We all played (which put five of us playing) and one person was IT. We gave this person a gator ball. It was just like freeze tag, except IT tried to throw the ball and peg people for them to be frozen. When someone was frozen they put both arms out like the side of a house. Someone else had to come up and put the rest of the house up with their arms, and the two had to recite the verse, "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!" Then that person was unfrozen. The timing was perfect! By the time the person was unfrozen, IT had just found the ball and managed to peg someone new. We never had everyone frozen at one time. I think if we'd played without the ball, though, we would have not had so much fun!

At this point, the parents came. All the kids knew the bible verse like the front of their hands, and I felt it was a great lesson they enjoyed! Praise God!

PSK #2: Prayers of Blessing

2009-07-17T23:05:00.000-07:00

Week two happened to fall the week before a great mission trip our church is going on to Guatemala. There couldn't have been a better week to do blessing!

We started out with some parachute games, and a few other running around games as our lesson was shorter this time. Then we opened our bibles to James 3:5-6, 9-10. We talked about how we can either build people up or destroy them by how we talk, and how we've all been hurt or uplifted by other people's talking about or to us. Then we had the kids define blessing and cursing in their own words, before giving them the following definition:

blessing - anything that you wish upon someone that builds them up and causes them to grow.

cursing - anything that you wish upon someone that causes them to fall, or would hurt their feelings if they knew.

We talked about how all throughout the bible, God gives blessings on people, and people give blessings on each other. We talked about Abraham, and Mary, and Adam, and how their blessings came true, and how blessings made in God's name ALWAYS come true.

Activity #1: I brought paint chips, 2 8x10 black frames, and some sharpies, and two pieces of construction paper. The kids each wrote a message for the people going on the trip to Guatemala on the paint chip (a blessing), and then another blessing for the people in Guatemala who will be blessed by our team. We made a collage on the construction paper with the paint chips, then put them in the frames. Each kid gathered around and placed their hands on a photo frame as we war-prayed (everyone praying out loud, at the same time) for the Guatemala trip. The kids LOVED the war praying!

Activity #2: While all of the above was going on, I pulled one child aside at a time and blessed them in the name of the Lord. I said a quick prayer of thanks for the children and their special gifts before hand, and then blessed them each to go be warriors for Christ in their own special way, ending in the Numbers blessing, "May the Lord bless you and keep you, may he make his face shine upon you and give you peace."

We then played human foosball until it was time to leave. We were going to go prayer-walking (walk around the room and bless different things), but parents came early. This wasn't the kids favorite day, but it was still fun!

PSK #1: Praying To Become Who God Wants You To Be

2009-07-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

We're starting a new session on prayer. My hope is that our kids will turn into prayer warriors for Christ, and will start to adapt a lifestyle of fervent prayer in their daily lives. I bought the book "Prayer Saturated Kids" at a local Christian bookstore, and will be working through it for the next few weeks.

We opened by reading Jeremiah 1:5, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." We asked the kids what they thought it meant to be "set apart." The kids struggled for a bit, but we generally came to the agreement that it meant you were different than every body else. We talked about how God made each of us different, and how we have different purposes because we're different.

Activity #1: Each child wrote their name at the top of a piece of construction paper, then drew a picture under their name. We passed the papers around, and each child wrote one characteristic/trait of the child on the paper (for instance, "nice," "good at praying", "helpful", etc). By the end, each child had about 20 characteristics of their own. Then, we read the passage about how God has appointed some to be pastors or teachers, etc. We talked about the traits of each, and had kids write down which one they thought best applied to them.

Lesson: We read the story of David and Goliath, and talked about how David was set apart to defeat Goliath. We focused in on the point where Saul asks David to put on his armor. When David put it on, it didn't fit, however, when David put on the armor that fit him, he was successful. God made us all different, and we all fit into different armor, and our job is to find that armor and wear it so we can be the best we can be.

Activity #2: All the children took their shoes off and threw them in the center. We separated kids into two teams. Each kid then picked two shoes (neither of which were their own, and they didn't pick a pair). We had them line up, then put on both shoes. They then had to race through an obstacle course. If they lost their shoe, they had to start over again. When the kids were finished, we talked about how it was so much easier to do it with our own shoes, and not shoes that were too small or too big.

Lesson: All the kids came and sat down, and we gave them a short quiz to get them thinking about how God made each of them different. The questions for the quiz were from the book "Prayer Saturated Kids." 1. What do you dream about most? 2. What bible character would you most want to be like and why? 3. What would you be happiest doing as an adult? 4. What's your favorite part of the school day? The worst? 5. What do you think God wants you to do to help others? ... After the kids had written these answers down with their names, I collected them to pray over them in my own time... We then talked more about how God made each of us different for a different purpose, and I asked the kids how we should figure out what that purpose was.

Bringing It Home: We talked about how we have to pray and ask God to show us who he created us to be. And how God would show us that through circumstances, prayer, the Bible, etc. Then, we played some music and had the kids lay down and pray while they listened to the music.

The take-home challenge: We challenged the kids to pray through music throughout the week, and to learn Jeremiah 1:5. We shortened it to, "Before I was born, you knew me and set me apart."