Pentecost Party

This is just a short post for those considering doing a Pentecost party or celebration at any point.

There is a site that has ideas for parties, it includes ways to decorate them, games, crafts, foods and any other things you might want to include.

If you are thinking about having a light party on the same week as Halloween there are also some ideas for this under "Glow in the Dark Party".

It can also give ideas for other parties, games or crafts if you were doing something along the lines of another theme.

The website is called My Kids Party Ideas and is full of some fantastic information!

Assembly on Justice and Martin Luther King

This was an assembly I did a couple of months ago. I was given the topic of justice, which when I looked up has a similar meaning to fairness, so I partly went with that idea. I did a second assembly on justice, and had this in mind when I led this one. In my head the idea was to create a link between these two.

Get the children to do something that isn’t fair, eg. One group wrap a present - 4 girls using selotape and scissors against a group of 3 boys who can only use one hand at a time, no selotape

Ask them, what was wrong with that competition?

Well, it wasn’t really fair.

And do you know what I based it a bit on boys against girls. But the boys didn’t really have a fair chance, they were just put in that group because they were boys.

Do you think it is important to be fair in games so that people get an equal chance? What about in life? So in school is it fair that you are in your school year because of your age, not because of the colour of your hair. What if you were only allowed to go to a shop if your feet were smaller than size 12 but if they were bigger then you wouldn’t be allowed to go to the shop? Or if you could only do sports if you had red hair?

Well, there was a man who lived a while again who thought that people should be treated fairly. In his country people weren’t treated fairly. There were laws that said only white people could sit at the front of the bus, that African American people couldn’t always use the same restaurants as white people, they couldn’t drink from the same water fountains or even go to the same schools. It was about the colour of their skin.

But this man didn’t like this, he wanted it to change, he wanted his country to be fair. But he didn’t want things to change through fighting, or through being nasty but through peaceful marches and through talking to people who were in charge of the country. He wanted to help all Americans get a good education and people would come from all over America to hear him speak.

So he stood up for fairness – he worked hard to get people to listen.

He had one very famous speech that was called the “I have a dream speech”, he imagined the world as a better place where things were fair. Things being fair is like justice, that everyone is treated fair is giving justice.

One of the lines from the speech was “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character” – that’s it’s not what is on the outside but what is on the inside that counts.

Now this man, Martin Luther King, changed the world. He made it a better place for people to live, with the help of lots of people. He died over 50 years ago but people still remember the things he did. He also believed in God, he was a minister a bit like Richard, and what he believed, the things he knew about Jesus affected his work. Jesus also talked about looking at what is inside, in the heart, and not about how someone looks.

Now, I want you guys to think about what sort of things do you see in the world that aren’t fair, things about the way people are treated, or maybe about how animals are treated. Fair trade, that you have looked into, is also about making the world a fairer place. What sort of things do you think should change to make the world a fairer place?

Maybe you see someone being bullied for the way they look or people being mean to each other? I want you to think about how you can change the world, or think about talking to your teachers about changing the world while we listen to the song. This song talks about waiting for change to happen but I want you to think how you can make it happen and make the world a better place to live in (then played the song, “Waiting for the World to Change” by John Meyer)

As part of this assembly you could share images of Martin Luther King making some of his speeches and one of the larger demonstrations.

Assembly on Trust & Mark 2, Man Lowered Through Roof

Now, I have a question as I start this morning. Do any of you have a close friend who you trust? Do you have a friend you would lend a chocolate bar to and trust them to not eat it? How about a friend who you would trust to look after you if you fell over in the playground?

Well, I have a story from the bible that is about trust.

There was a man in the bible, we don’t have a name for him, is it okay if we call him John?

This man, John, couldn’t walk, he had a medical problem which meant he couldn’t do anything with his body, he was paralysed.

One day he heard that Jesus was coming to where he lived. So he asked four of his friends to help him meet Jesus. He had heard that Jesus could help people, could make them better. So his friends carried him on a mat to the house where Jesus was. Maybe John would get to walk. But when they got to the house they saw that there were people everywhere. People in the house surrounding Jesus, people all over the place. Such a big crowd they couldn’t even get to the doorway of the house. So John and his friends had to decide they could meet Jesus.

So here we have a problem. John and his friends needed to be good at problem solving. So, I want to see how good you are at problem solving.

Here I have some rings that are attached. It is possible to separate them but not by pulling them, through sliding and twisting the rings. Does anyone want to volunteer to try and get them apart?
Now you have to trust me when I say it is possible to get them apart.

Get some children to try and solve it. You can buy puzzles like this in Hawkins Bazaar or similar shops. I bought mine from The Discovery Store.

Right so back to the story, can you remind me who was the main person in our story? And who did he want to meet?

Right so the friends of John had to work out how they were going to get him to Jesus. Well, here is a clue for those good at problem solving. Houses in that part of the world had stairs on the outside, stairs which went all the way to the roof. This meant people could go and sleep on the roof when it was really hot. So, what the men decided to do was go to the top of the roof of the house Jesus was in and burrow in the top, making a hole big enough to lower John down on a mat so that he could meet Jesus. Imagine the trust he had to have in his friends. John had to believe they wouldn’t drop him but would in fact keep him safe. I’ve got an example, we will use the bendy man as John and this green piece of card with string attached as our mat.

Now, imagine if the men had been worried about dropping him, they might have shaken the mat and John would have fallen. Or if one of them had started daydreaming, do any of you daydream? Well, if one of them had started daydreaming then John would have fallen. Or if they hadn’t worked brilliantly together lowering it at the same time John would have fallen. So John had to really trust his friends.

(demonstrate all these things happening with the mat, showing bendy man falling off every time)

Well, John didn’t get dropped and eventually he was in front of Jesus. Now Jesus wasn’t annoyed but so happy at all that John had gone through to meet him. And he told John that all the bad things John had done wrong, all the times he had been mean and hurt people were gone. Then he told John to stand up, take his mat and walk.

And do you know what, John did just that, he stood up and walked.

John’s life was changed that day because he trusted that Jesus could change him and he trusted his friends to take care of him and help him meet Jesus.

We can look for friends who we can trust but we can also try to be the sorts of friends that people trust. So we can take care of our friends when they get hurt or even look after their things for them when they ask us.

Let us pray and thank God for giving us friends that we can trust in lots of different situations.

Prayer…

Assembly on Tower of Babel, Peace and Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Here is the assembly I did about peace between churches. It was based around the tower of Babel and responding to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Before I start I need 6 volunteers from year 6.

Now I am going to give 6 volunteers from year 6 two minutes to make a tower out of paper and selotape. The tallest tower the better.

Right, while these guys make a tower I’ll tell you what we are talking about today. Today we are going to learn about a story from the bible called The Tower of Babel. We are also going to find out who is the greatest, who is the best person here. So could you put your hands up if you are in year 1, what about if you are in year 6. Who thinks being in year 1 makes you the greatest? How about being in year 6?

Who here is really tall? Who is really small? Who thinks being really small makes you the best? How about being really tall, are you the best in the school?

Who here is good at football? Who here is good at doing plays? Do any of you think being good at football makes you the greatest in the school? How about being good at plays, does that make you the best?

What about the person who can shout their name the loudest? Do you think you’re the greatest?

Well, while we are trying to decide who is the greatest we have some towers being built. Could you hold them up?

Now here is my tower (a rubbish tower made out of half a piece of paper), now I think it is the best, I think I am the greatest? Who agrees with me? Surely mine is the best, that means I am the best, I’m better than everyone?

The story I am going to share with you is about a group of people who thought they could build a tower that would reach up to heaven. They were living in Babylonia and there was a king called King Nimrod. Everyone in this country and in the world spoke the same language, which meant no one got confused.

Now the King decided he wanted to be famous, he wanted everyone to know that he was great! He wanted to walk around and people say to him, “Oh, you are so amazing, the most amazing, incredible man who has ever lived.”

But he knew he needed help. So he told the people in his country that they could also be great IF they built a tower, a really big tower that went all the way up to the sky.

Now God, who sees everything, could see what they were doing. And he looked to see their hearts and saw that the people weren’t doing it because they cared about God and wanted to be closer to him they just wanted to be known as great people. This made God unhappy. God decided to mix up their languages so that couldn’t talk to each other anymore. So they started to babble, they didn’t know what was happening, they were making funny noises. Some were speaking French, some Chinese, Spanish, and lots of other languages. Do any of you speak different languages? What sort do you speak? Well, these people couldn't understand what each other was saying because they didn't speak any of the same languages. Well, after this, God scattered people all over the world.

So what can this story remind us of? Well, it’s not good to think we are the greatest at everything. I don’t come in here and think you guys should bow to me because I am the most amazing person who ever lived. It’s brilliant to be good at something but not to treat others badly because of it. I know people who are great at football but if they came in and said because you are rubbish at football I will not even speak to you, you are not special enough to even be around me I would be really annoyed because no matter who you are, what you are good at or not good at God thinks you are amazing. He treats you like you are great even though he is God and what he wants is us to treat others in the same way.

This week is the week of prayer for Christian unity – I’ve been to lots of different churches and some of them come in different categories, like Baptist, Church of England, Methodist, Catholic, - there’s lots of different types of churches, you also have big churches, small churches, churches that meet in schools, churches that meet in coffee shops, indoor skateboarding parks and my brother used to go to a church in America that met under a bridge under a motorway.

But do you know what, none of those churches are greater than each other.

Now, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is when churches get together and pray for each other. They may have lots of differences in the way that they do services or the people that they help, they may pray in different ways and meet at different churches or in different buildings. But they are all looking to God in their work and that is the greatest thing they can do.

So that’s what is good about having the week of prayer. During this week we can pray for churches that they don’t worry about which is great but instead learn how to do nice things for each other instead and pray for each other.

And you guys can do the same, we can remember that God thinks we are great but none of us are the greatest, God is the greatest. So we don’t need to fight about it but instead do nice things for each other.
Lets pray…

Christmas 3 – Sensory Christmas

The final post in the Christmas series.

Each year at our church we try to approach Christmas from a different viewpoint and bring this into the services and other activities.  This viewpoint is our Christmas theme and means that we can include different aspects in our Christmas teaching and events. Previous years have included “Imagine yourself in the nativity” and “Imagine the nativity in your world”, for this one the Churches Advertising Network was a great link, the poster being a great visual for this - Christmas 2009 Blog Post.

This year we did something that we’ve been building up to and follows on from previous years.  The focus this year was on the journey.  We were looking at the journeys made to the stable and then home, and what journeys we take from the nativity.  This was reflected in our children’s nativity, looking into the different journeys taken by the people in the Christmas story.

But the focus that this blog post is really about was our sensory stations that were laid around the church. The church was open for two hours, one in the morning and one in the evening.  During that time anyone and everyone were welcome to come to the church and take a journey (or even all three). The church was laid out with three journeys, Mary & Joseph, Shepherds and Wise Men. Each journey was laid out with different footsteps and each journey had 4-7 stations. Each station gave something to reflect on that would relate to something that person experienced in the Christmas story, for example the wise men meeting Herod, Mary and Joseph going on their journey, experiencing tiredness and other strains that relate to being on a journey. There are a couple of station examples at the end.

My priority when creating a sensory station place is to have something for children as well as adults to do at each station. This might be something to think about but it generally involves having something to do, e.g. making a person out of playdough who has helped you with your journey with Jesus. At another station break a glowstick and keep it to remind you that Jesus is the light of the world and is with you always. At a wise men based journey station smell some oils of frankincense and myrrh to think about the gifts the wise men brought to Jesus.  Having stations with things like this also means adults can try both and don’t just have to look at things deeply but sometimes see the journeys in simple ways.

The three journeys ended at the manger. This was a chance to sit in the nativity and imagine Jesus as a baby, a baby born like us all.

A station idea like this isn’t something most churches can do all the time but it is a great chance to give people different ways to pray, different things to consider when it comes to a story they may have heard many times before. We learn, pray and communicate differently and this is a chance to let people do that.  It is something that is difficult to describe to people but if done in different ways and linked in with services or other church events can encourage a variety of people to come.

Again our Christmas events were hampered by the weather but it did mean that people had to make difficult journeys of their own that week and related to all we were trying to share in our Christmas at church.

 

Station Examples

Station Shepherds 3

You are getting closer to the manger where Jesus was born now. While shepherds were waiting on the hill many angels joined with the angel Gabriel and together they sang praises to God. "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests."There are people today who still write and sing songs to God, praising what he has done. Take this moment as you reflect on the experiences of the shepherds to listen to one of the songs on the CD player. A song that sings of the joy of a baby being born that will change the world. There are words if you want to read them.

Children: You are getting closer to the manger where Jesus was born now. While shepherds were waiting on the hill many angels joined with the angel Gabriel and together they sang praises to God. Listen to the song on the CD as you imagine the angels singing to God. Think of the joy they are sharing.

Station Shepherds 4

After the shepherds met with Mary, Joseph and Jesus they went and told people. They couldn’t keep the news to themselves. It is said that they spread the word and the people they told were amazed. The story for the shepherds didn’t end there. After they had told people they returned, they glorified and praised God for all that they had seen and heard. You will see that on one of the walls there is a wall for prayer. Is there someone you would like to hear the good news of Jesus or is there something you want to praise God for? Add it to the praise wall.

Children: After the shepherds met with Mary, Joseph and Jesus they went and told people. They were so excited they couldn’t keep the news to themselves. Is there something you want to say thank you to God for? Write it down or draw it on the paper praise wall.

Christmas 2 – Holiday Club

This is part of my Christmas series, talking about the things we did at church this Christmas that were a little more interesting or different than the things we normally do.

We do an Easter, Christmas and summer holiday club every year with another church. We do similar things every year – games, singing, crafts, God slots, etc.  This year at Christmas we decided to do things a little bit different.

We included some games and crafts and singing but we built it around something more special. Over the course of the morning we put on a nativity.

As the children arrived they could decide who they wanted to be. If we had 50 Mary’s that was okay because we would make it work. In school plays and the variety of nativity’s, children tend to be told what part they’re going to play. Then one day you end up speaking to a group of adults and if they have been in any sort of nativity you can easily have a conversation of “I never got to be…”. I've heard this from a variety of people, “I never got to be Mary because I was blonde”, “I never got to be a wise man, I was always the donkey”, etc. So we let the children be whoever they wanted to.  As it happened we ended up with about 8 wise men, many donkeys and no Joseph, but we made it work.

Doing a nativity in this way creates problems with costumes because you don’t know how many wise men outfits you need until the children come and you can’t have some costumes better than others because that creates many issues on it’s own. So we made it possible. I collected all the costumes at a pound shop, buying different coloured plastic bags to represent different characters. Blue for Mary, green for shepherds, purple for wise men, etc. When the time came we cut the bottoms off the bags and tied other plastic bags around the waists for belts or used other to made capes or headscarves. But we had to distinguish between angels and sheep so during one of the craft sessions we made bits to go with the costumes - sheep tails, donkey masks and headdresses, angel wings, shepherd crooks, wise men crowns. During another craft session we made the props and other bits – wise men gifts, a manger, extra cardboard sheep and a chance to paint a nativity backdrop (an idea I stole from our messy church session – see Christmas post number 1).

The children could choose to do the different crafts each session, bits for their own costumes and then do any other bits of the crafts or anything extra they wanted.

During the morning we learnt a song that we sang during the nativity, did a practise and played some of our usual games while also learning about the nativity story as there would be some children who might not know it.

We invited parents to join us for the last 15minutes of the holiday club to watch the nativity. It was a very simple nativity, with a narrator (a role I took for myself) reading out the lines the children with those parts had to repeat.  Actions and stage directions were also read out as part of the narrator role (e.g. “Then Mary and Joseph sat down and the shepherds sat behind them”). As you can imagine there were some amusing moments, but you always need those in a nativity, maybe it made it more authentic...

It was a fantastic holiday club (hampered only by some major snowfalls which meant some children couldn’t come) and gave us a chance to invite parents and share the Christmas story with them.

Christmas 1 – Messy Church

This Christmas at church we decided to try something new with our children.  We have good work with the children who come to the church and even with the groups we have associated with, e.g. holiday clubs, junior youth group but we don’t have much of a connection between the two.  One of the reasons for this is that many of the fringe groups we have happen with another church, we run our holiday club with them.  This way we can talk about all the services going on but we can’t really overtly push what happens at the church where I would as these things are shared.

So how could we change this?  And what could we do with a virtually full calendar?

We also wanted to do something that got all ages involved. I would love to do a once a month all age service but with all the different things going on in our services it again becomes difficult, we have found other ways of making parts of our services have all age content and also doing a breakfast club once a month. But it would still be great to do an all age thing, something people would be comfortable inviting others to, something where people can meet others, feel relaxed and not worry too much if their children can’t sit still.

So what combines all those things and would be great for a Christmas event?

Messy Church!

So we started on the long journey of preparing for Messy Church. As with all programs in church work you make it fit yourself and that is what we did for messy church.  We combined it with our junior youth group, Transformers.  We made it part of a big Christmas end of term celebration.  We added carols, a sketch, a talk and of course audience participation – something we normally have at the end of our Transformers evening session.

We combined this with games and crafts as people arrived.  Trying to add a mixture of general Christmas games – get the pretend snowball into the bucket, guess the Christmas film - with games with a nativity link – pin the tail on the donkey, anagrams of Christmas story words and a variety of other games. There were also crafts, things that could be used in the worship – create a prayer bauble, paint a nativity picture and things the children could take home – Christmas cards, decorate candles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was an opportunity before worship to dress the Christmas tree from a box of decorations. The children could put them where they liked and again all ages were together. This was followed by our time of worship and then a meal together.

The fantastic part of this messy church event was there was a mixture of our usual families, excited children, toddlers and older people, families who had never come to our church for anything before except to drop their children off at Transformers and others.

There is one thing to remember when doing your own Messy Church. It is messy! And it is meant to be messy.

We can look at our churches and worry what some may say if it gets covered in glue and glitter but even if it takes two and a half hours to clear up (which it did) we can remember that this is an exciting time for the children and their families, a time to have lots of fun, get messy, fell part of what is around you and do it all together.

Messy Church went really well. There was some great feedback from children and adults and even siblings who couldn’t be there getting jealous because their little sister couldn’t stop talking about how good it was and all the things they did. I would recommend it to any church who wanted to try something new. We will definitely be doing another one in Spring term 2011.