Flame: Creative Children's Ministry

 This week's lectionary has a variety of stories to choose from, but we will be looking at the old testament reading: the story of God putting a rainbow in the sky as a sign of his promise never to flood the earth again.  Some parts of the story of Noah's ark can be quite upsetting, and can inspire big questions about life, God's power and the consequences of doing wrong things. In the background, however, is the overarching story of listening to God, rescue, new beginnings, and God's promise to be with us. As the story ends, we have the powerful symbol of the rainbow stretched across the sky as a sign of God's life-giving love for us and his creation, and his promise never to send a flood again.  This week's play dough mat is an invitation to explore this part of the story and also to think about what promises mean. What is a promise? What does it mean to make a promise? What does God promise and what do God's people promise Him in return? How does it feel ...

This is a simple but fun craft with a real ‘awe’ factor when the children see the curds and whey separating.   The fact that something solid is made from the liquid helps children to reflect on the fact that God’s promises to Abraham are solid and firm and that Abraham can trust God to do as he says.  This activity is linked to the story of Abraham in Genesis 15, where God tells Abraham: “Look at the sky. See the many stars. There are so many you cannot count them. Your family will be like that.” You will need: 250 ml milk, 3 tablespoons vinegar, a sieve, a spoon, a bowl, kitchen roll, cookie cutter stars (or other cutters if you would like children to choose!), food colouring if you want to make coloured stars! Heat up the milk until it is hot but not boiling and pour it into a bowl.   Add the vinegar to the hot milk and start stirring.   Very quickly, the milk will separate into solids (curds) and liquid (whey).   ...

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...