Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

I've been away for a while moving house but now I am back online! Here is a colourful activity to help children celebrate God's love for us and for others and to help them think about how this love links us together. I found a tutorial here  for a chain of hearts craft and it made me think of how we could use the idea with children... Cut out several coloured hearts of the same size.    Fold the hearts in half and cut out the middle sections- you can discard these or use them for something else!  Open out the hearts  Make a cut, like so, at the side of each heart.  Link the hearts together by overlapping the cut edges and gluing them (a bit like making a paper chain).  Attach a piece of ribbon to one of the end hearts and hang on a door knob! Things to talk about and use for prayer... talk about God's love for everyone and how He wants us to show love to others Children could write names of people on the hearts who they wou...

You will need:  Bread, a cup, water, a bowl and a towel if you want to illustrate foot washing! The Last Supper Jesus showed how much he loved his friends by washing their feet and by sharing a special meal with them. Who are your friends? How would you help them? What would you share with them? Share some of the bread and think about what you would do.  Ask God to be with your friends.

We've found that sometimes when we suggest the younger children pray for the people in their lives, it's really hard for them to fix on what to pray for!  Like the prayer bingo idea, this is an idea to help children to think more widely about what they could pray for in an everyday prayer time.  It's probably most suitable for under 5s. Print out some pictures representing 'home', 'family', 'friends', 'food', 'school', 'healing', 'thank you', 'sorry'.  Laminate them if possible so you can get good use out of them and cut them out.  We made two sets so there was plenty of choice and you might choose the same thing to pray for again!  Then either put them in a small bag (we used a small tin instead), shake them about a bit and let the children choose something out of the bag to pray for.  They might want to close their eyes, but whatever they draw out should be a surprise!  Younger children will need explanatio...

Cut out individual paper people.  Children choose someone in their family or amongst their friends that they would like God to bless and then either write that person's name or draw their face onto a paper person.  These people can then be pegged to a line or blutacked to a board as the children ask God to bless them, simply saying 'God bless...', or praying quietly in their head if they prefer.  If the line or board is kept up, each time the children look at it, they can remember that person and say thank you to God for them. Over time, stories might emerge about how God has worked in that person's life! When we tried this this week it worked well, but some children took delight in putting a pin through their person's head (as some are bound to do!!)  Blu tack is probably a better bet!