Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

This is a really exciting way to talk about the power of the Holy Spirit! You will need: wax crayons (wrappers off works best) strong glue (eg. from a glue gun or superglue), a canvas (this really doesn't work on paper!), a protective sheet, a hairdryer. We did this outside with an extension cable for the hairdryer because there is a certain amount of splatter! Glue the crayons to the top of the canvas and let the glue set firm. Set the hairdryer to the highest level and start blowing it across the bottom ends of the crayons.  It takes a while but they eventually start to melt.  Set the dryer down a heat notch and continue to melt the crayons.  Watch as the colour is released!  We did this with children aged 5-9 and, as long as there was adult supervision they were brilliant at taking turns with the hairdryer and had loads of suggestions about where to aim it to make certain colours run in different directions. When you have finished, th...

This is a great activity for a prayer station or group prayer time focused on praying for the Holy Spirit to come.  It would also work well for discussing the transforming power of the Spirit.   You will need: Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), white vinegar, food colouring, eye droppers (less than 60p each at Boots!) Mix food colouring into white vinegar to colour it.  Keep each colour of vinegar in a separate cup and add a dropper to each cup.  Cover the bottom of a baking tray with bicarbonate of soda.  Drop a drop of coloured vinegar onto the soda and watch the explosion! Think and talk about: Talk about the power of the Spirit and how it can transform our lives if we pray for it to come.  Compare this to the power of the explosion that happens when the vinegar hits the soda.  It might be good also to talk about the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit that can grow in our lives.   Pray: Ask children to ch...

As today is Pentecost we decided not to beat around the bush but to go straight ahead and tell the children about the gifts of the Spirit! It can be quite hard, even for adults, to get your head round all the gifts so I decided to limit our explanation to 10 of the gifts I thought were easiest to explain.  You may or may not agree with my selection or explanations but it was a great introduction to a huge topic! I made a sheet, detailing 10 Spiritual gifts: To print the sheet, click  here Then I photocopied the sheet times the number of children we expected and cut out the individual labels.  That made a lot of labels!  Next I mixed the labels up and distributed them around the room. After telling the children the Pentecost story, we asked the children to go and find all 10 different labels and come back.  When everyone had collected all they can we explained each one and gave short specific testimonies about healing, apostles, tongues and miracles....