Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

The main objective of our school lunchtime club is to form relationships with the children and to open up discussion about God with them in a natural way.  This seems to happen best when everyone is busy doing something creative! Last week we got to the end of our focus on the fruit of the spirit by looking at 'goodness'- we weren't doing them in order and this just happened to come last, probably because it's the hardest to explain! Sarah hit upon the idea of focussing on what we thought was 'good' about the character of God and then helping the children to relate this to how we should behave ourselves.  In order to do this we decided to let the children make collages of their ideas... We used paper plates as a base and a variety of papers.  Here's what the children came up with! An expression of God's love and his goodness to us.  The child who made this, then was prompted to go and give it to her teacher as a gift! This picture s...

I found a really easy way to make origami hearts on Pinterest the other day (click here ) and it struck me that, not only could older children make them easily, but we could also use them to think about God's love for us. First of all, here's how to make the hearts.  You need a square of paper and I'm not good at writing instructions for origami, so hopefully the pictures will be enough!  Fold into thirds Turn over and fold the back piece down.  Fold the edges in.  Children could make these hearts and discuss loving our neighbours as ourselves, or talk about God's love for us.  To make an extra point about God's love for us, you can insert some handwritten blessing verses (I used Jeremiah 29:11 below) and children can either keep them for themselves or make and give them to others.  Another idea is to use matchboxes as little blessing boxes.  Concertina up a Bible verse and stick the first section of it to the insi...

On Wednesday we have a thanksgiving service at school and my job is to tell the story.  We're going to look at the importance of remembering to say sorry by using the story of Jesus healing the 10 lepers.  As usual, the story needs to be as visual and interesting as possible.  I thought about it for quite a while and came up with various scenarios including the use of rubber gloves, but this is what I decided on in the end... You need a chain of 10 'lepers' made from sticky backed contact paper with white sticky dots randomly stuck onto it (I happened to have red in the cupboard, but any colour will do!) Use them to tell the beginning of the story when the group of lepers see Jesus and call out to him to have pity on them.  Jesus sends them away to see the priests and as they go they are healed.  At this point, pull the sticky side away from the backing paper and dispose of it (leaving the paper behind as the 'healed' lepers. Put the 'healed leper...

This week we need some armour of God for the Sunday morning service so I decided to make some... As with anything, I tried to make it as quickly, easily and cheaply as possible without neglecting the finished presentation! All in all, the armour cost less than £5 to make because we had some ribbon in our stores already.  If we had had to buy the ribbon it would have been just slightly more expensive!  I spent about an hour making it so it's pretty quick too. I used: flip flops, foam sword, foil food platter (all from the pound shop), 1 1/2 large sheets of gold card, gold ribbon, glue dots, paint pens, stapler I wanted each piece of the armour not only to be labelled according to Ephesians 6, but also to have a scriptural reference that would help to explain its function.  I have included verse references with the details below. Shoes of the Gospel of Peace: Remove straps from flip flops and place strips of glue dots on the soles.  Stick lengths of...

For those children who think logically and mathematically, here's a game that will exercise their brains, but also help them to explore and remember ideas about Jesus! I found an idea about colour sudoku for children  and it made me think about how I could adapt it for church.  I've started off with an easier version that works on 4 sets of 4 squares.  For ease of identification each block of squares is colour coded.  The pictures I have chosen (and ideas for discussion around them) are:  Crown- Jesus is king, our leader Cross- salvation, crucifixion/ resourrection, sacrifice, new life Heart- Jesus' love for us, loving others because he loves us bread and wine- Last supper/ communion and the meaning of each item Print out the puzzle sheet ( click here ) and cut out the grid and each individual picture square.  If you want to keep the puzzle more long term, it's probably a good idea to laminate it. Now arrange the pictures so that each one of...

Yesterday, we were thinking about one of our mission partners in South Sudan and the children she works with.  We wanted to make something as a gift to show the children there that we were thinking of them: something that would somehow show a link between us.  We ended up making some friendship bracelets to send to them. While this was a specific craft to show friendship, it opens up conversation about kindness and showing people that you care about them by doing something for them- kindness seems, after all, to be about showing care for others.  It would be a great craft if you were thinking about kindness as one of the fruit of the Spirit because it's easy and it involves connecting things together (beads, wool, pipe cleaners) to show that we are linked to other people by kind acts that we do for them or they do for us. We made the bracelets by choosing a pipe cleaner and... ...threading Hama beads onto them in various patterns  ...winding different colour...

At the moment, I'm having a bit of a spree of finding ideas and then adapting them for use with the children!  I found this one here . This is a great thing to do with your most able crafters amongst the children.   Our 11 year olds had no problem, but the rest of us worked together to make a joint effort! Each globe has 20 faces and I challenged the children to think of 20 different words (either as a group or individually) to describe God, each of which we would write on the faces. The globes look beautiful when finished, especially if you have time to decorate them, and it was an interesting challenge to think of enough attributes of God to fill each face without repetition!  We're now going to hang these in the room we use on a Sunday to remind children of the amazing character of God! Once you know how, the globes are quite easy to make... To make the globes you will need 20 circles, each with an equilateral triangle inside it.  I've made a template ...

Yesterday I was working with one of our children on communion preparation.  Part of what we talked about was discipleship of Jesus.  If we wanted to follow him, how could we show that in our everyday lives?   I wanted to get across the idea of following being an active thing so we made a sandal (or flip flop!) of ideas!  I found this craft on Pinterest here , but we put a discipleship slant on it! Cut out a flip flip shape from card and make 3 holes like so... Put a pipe cleaner underneath the flip flop shape and thread one end through hole A and one end through hole B. We chose people we would try to remember to pray for and then chose a button to represent each person, threading the buttons onto the pipe cleaner ends.  We then threaded both ends through hole C to make the flip flop strap and secured them underneath. Now we discussed things we could do (achievable things!) that would reflect the fact that we were trying to live out what Jesu...