Praying with Games: Hungry Hippo Prayers, Story Links and Talking Points

This Summer we are experimenting with a 'board games cafe' once a week at the local community centre. It's probably wrongly named because none of the games need a board, but they are all popular and readily available children's games!

It got me thinking about how we could use the games as a church activity as well, so this is the first instalment of some prayers and activity ideas based on games...

You will need: A Hungry Hippos game (or more than one!)

Play the game and get your hippo to collect as many of the balls as possible.

Prayer Idea 1:Count the number of balls you have and, for each ball, say thank you to God for something or someone.

Prayer Idea 2: Count the number of balls you have and, for each one, say thank you for a food you like

Story Link: The parable of the rich fool (Luke  12: 13-21)

The hippos are greedy and try to get as many balls as they can. What things in life are worth having? What does the story say about storing our riches up?

Story Link: Matthew 25, The parable of the sheep and the goats

The hippos are hungry. What does Jesus say about feeding the hungry in this parable? How could we do that?

Talk about: What does it mean to be greedy?

How does it feel if someone else is greedy?

Where do you see greed around you?

How could we help people who don't have enough?

Pray for those who don't have enough food to eat.

Make a plan to collect items for the local food bank

Messy Church: Serving God and Others (The Sheep and the Goats)

In this month's Messy Church we looked at the story of the sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 and thought about what it meant to serve others and to serve God.  This involved lots of practical activities!

Cafe Role Play area

 Polishing the church brass

 Litter picking in the church yard

 Praying for refugees

 Gathering leaves

 building furniture (this one was strictly for the adults!)

 Making biscuit boxes...

...and baking biscuits to put in them! 

We also had a take-home sheet so that we could continue to think about serving and helping others during the rest of the month.  

Click here to download the sheet!

Re-telling the story of the Sheep and the Goats with felt

It's sometimes really hard to keep the attention of the children at our school lunchtime club.  They've been learning hard all morning so it's no wonder they need to let off steam!

It means we have to be creative in our story telling.  This method we tried today was the best we've found so far because you can hold the board up for everyone to see and the felt won't fall off!

The base board is a piece of board with a sheet of felt glued to it.  All the other pieces are cut up felt and that's it!  It literally took 10 minutes to cut out the pieces and make the board.  Because none of the other pieces are stuck down you can use both them and the board again and again!

 There was once a beautiful place where everyone wanted to be.  It was bright and sunny.  No one ever cried or died or got sick.  It was amazing!

 To get to the beautiful place, you had to go through a gate...

 The gate was guarded by someone who made the decision about who to let in (gold piece).  Lots of people (green pieces) gathered outside because they wanted to come in.

 The golden man separated the people.  Some went to his left and some to his right.  He said to the people on the right, " Welcome to the beautiful place!  I'm so glad to let you in!  When I was tired and hungry and cold and sad and ill and lonely you helped me!"  But they didn't understand because they'd never seen the man before!

 The golden man said, "You helped people you met who were tired and hungry and cold and sad and ill and lonely (red pieces with small gold piece).  They all had part of me inside them.  Because you helped them, it was like you were helping me! (put a small gold piece on each of these green pieces)  Come in!"

 He turned to the people on his left.  "I'm sorry", he said,  "but you can't come in.   I was tired and hungry and cold and sad and ill and lonely you didn't help me!"  But they didn't understand because they'd never seen the man before!

The golden man said, "You saw people who were tired and hungry and cold and sad and ill and lonely.  They all had part of me inside them.  Because you didn't help them, you weren't helping me!"  Those people had to stay outside the gate and couldn't go into the beautiful place.

Even though we didn't use the words 'Jesus' or 'heaven'  The children guessed what the story was about and we had some really thoughtful conversations about how the various characters might feel.  We will certainly use this method again!