Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

This is a fun scientific activity to explore the theme of hidden things being revealed that is a key to the story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. You will need: A sheet of red cellophane, red colouring pencils, blue or green pencils, white paper Here is a video of what you need to do: On Paul's journey to Damascus he encounters Jesus in a way that transforms him.  Even though he is temporarily struck blind, Saul/Paul's eyes are opened to who Jesus really is. Write words about or draw a picture of Jesus with your non-red pencil and then hide it with red squiggles. Use the red cellophane to reveal the hidden words! The red cellophane acts as filter for the red light so only the non-red words or pictures will be seen.

As part of our holiday club session on shining like a light, I wanted to help the children to understand in a visual way how Paul and Silas helped bring the prison guard into the light by telling him about Jesus.  I'd been thinking about scratch art, where the darkness is scratched away to reveal the colour underneath and then I found how to make my own scratch art on Pinterest.  Click  here  to see how! So... it took a little bit of time, but as we only had about 25 children it wasn't too onerous.  I used oil pastels to make simple pictures of a cross on a coloured background (on credit card size pieces of card).  Wax crayons would work as well. Next I painted over each picture with a mixture of black paint with a little bit of washing up liquid mixed in. During the session, we gave each child a blacked out picture and a coin and they rubbed off the paint to reveal a coloured cross underneath.  They didn't know what would be underneath so...