Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

We had a session this weekend looking at the story of Jesus calling his disciples (Luke 5:1-11) and had a lot of fun.  Here's what we got up to! Acting out the story and then using craft items to make something that reflected the story (what the individual child liked or remembered most)  A fishing boat with more fish on the 'other side' of the boat  The fishing boat The face of Jesus Playing fishers of men 3-in-a-row with laminated fish and people shapes Praying for people who don't know about Jesus yet and asking that God will help us to be fishers of people like the disciples

This week we reached the stage in the sermon on the mount where Jesus speaks about worry.  There is great imagery in the passage about birds and flowers being given everything they need by God and the children were really able to identify with the simplicity of the ideas.  It led to great discussion about what God provides for us and what we worry about.  Each child took a stone and glued a heart to it.  This was to remind them that God loves them even more than he loves the birds and the plants.  A stone is also something strong to hold onto, a reflection of the strength and reassurance God can bring in worrying times.  We wanted the children to take the stone home as something they could hold on to when they were worried and that would remind them of God's love and might prompt them to pray.   I thought it would be a good idea for the children to make a pot to keep the stone in that would remind them of the verses about the birds and flowers...

Here is the take home sheet for our 7-11s group this week.  We're looking this term at the sermon on the mount and this week the topic is love!  This is a game to help children to learn the memory verse. Written down, the rules seem complicated, but when you play the game it's easy to understand! Cut out the net and make the cube up.  Print out a copy  here . Play with a partner To start you must throw face 1 (the first part of the verse). Partner A throws the cube.  If they do not land on face 1, they will have to throw again on their next turn! Partner B then has a turn. The object of the game is to 'earn' each part of the verse in the correct order and to write it down.  After face 1, the task is to throw face 2 and then face 3 and so on.  Landing on face 5 after face 2, for example, does not count as this is not the correct order! The winner is the first person to write down the verse in the correct order.

This term, our 5-11s are learning about what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount.  This week we got to the section on oaths or promises.  After some discussion, we focussed on verse 37- the part where people are told to let their yes be yes and their no be no!   To make the point about how easy we find it to break promises but how hard it is to keep them, I gave everyone an egg.  The children then had to play a running and jumping game holding their egg and continue caring for it until the end of the session.  This made the point that, in order to keep a promise and not break it, we had to take constant care!  In other words, don't say you will do something unless you are willing to go the distance with it and put in the effort.  I did give out raw eggs.  If you are less brave (or possibly much more sensible!) you might give the children hard boiled eggs.  We only had two cracks by the end of the session and only one of those requi...

Over the summer we are doing scaled down children's work with one group for 3-11s!  It's not an easy task to keep everyone involved but we are having a go! This week, reflecting what the adults were doing in the main church, we looked at the calling of Levi.  Here's what we did... Game:  Ball change! In a bag put 5 red balls, 5 blue balls and 5 yellow balls.  Split children in to two teams- red team and blue team.  Children take it in turns to reach into the bag and pull out a ball.  Red team are looking for red balls, blue team are looking for blue balls.  If children pull out a ball of their colour, they keep it.  If they pull out a ball of the wrong colour, they have to put it back in the bag.  The first team to pull out all 5 balls of their colour is the winner! Story telling with coloured cards: Click  here  to go to the post showing how we told the story in a very visual way! Next we talked about the fact that...

We're always trying different ways to tell stories in visual ways, so here is what we tried today in our scaled down summer group! You will need: small square shaped cards- 1 gold, 5 double sided cards, green one side and red on the other 4 green cards with red stripes Jesus (Gold card) ...met a tax collector called Levi.  In Jesus day people thought that Tax Collectors were not good people and, like everyone, Levi had done things that he was sorry for doing.  Jesus said to Levi "Follow me!" Levi got up, left his things and followed Jesus.  Jesus, forgave his sins and helped him to change his life and come closer to God (turn card over to become green). That night, Jesus had dinner at Levi's house with other tax collectors (red cards). Some Pharisees (stripy cards to show that, though they are following the law, they are not changed in the way that Levi and Jesus' followers are) saw what Jesus was doing and said "Why are ...

In our celebration slot at Olympics Messy church, we focussed on the idea of being on a team and how you could be part of Jesus' team.  This is the story we told and it involves a lot of audience participation!! Story- The Call of Matthew. Being on Jesus' team Matthew was someone that no one really liked! ( Boo!) He collected tax money from people-  probably the job that people hated most (Boo!) Nobody wanted to speak to him.  (Boo!) Jesus came to town one day (hurray!) He brought his team with him!  (hurray!) Everybody came out to see Jesus and cheer! (hurray!) Matthew sat at his desk because he still had a job to do (boo!) Jesus (hurray!)  walked over to Matthew (boo!) Watch Jesus tell him off the people said (hurray) "Come and be on my team!" Jesus said (WHAT?) "WHAT?" Said all the people "But everyone on your team has to be amazingly and brilliantly good at being perfect.  You must have it wrong.  He...