Lesson Theme/Topic:We concluded our 3-part series on prayer. We opened with the following video from the movie "Talladega Nights":
What they should have left with: Prayer is a spiritual disciple that all Christians must be engaged in. It is one of our connecting points to God. We need to take it seriously, and understand that there are right, and wrong ways to pray. Next week: We begin our series on "Loving Others". First up? Gossip.
Middle School Youth Group -- February 24, 2010
Lesson Theme/Topic: Wednesday nights lesson continued with our "Scary, Gross and Weird Stories from the Bible". Our story this week was from Judges 4:1-29, about a king named Jael who took in an enemy of Israel and then killed him by putting a tent peg through his temple. OUCH!
What they should have left with: Monna Kreher did a GREAT job sharing about courage. The kids were asked to write on a slip of paper something that they needed courage for this week, and then the requests were passed around. Each of the kids were prayed for and were asked to pray for others through the week.
Next week: We will be talking about Elijah and the prophets of Baal, as detailed in 1 Kings 18 from the Old Testament.
E-Klub- February 24, 2010
Lesson Theme/Topic: Last night's lesson was about being friends. Our scripture was from Luke 6:27-38. Jesus taught that we should love our enemies and treat others as we want to be treated. What they should have left with: In our centers we worked together as teams to accomplish goals and we made beaded pin-ons to give to friends. We learned that being friends isn't only being nice to each other it's also helping someone when the need help.
Lesson Theme/Topic: Sunday night's lesson continued with the study of prayer. Several scriptures were used along with the Lord's Prayer from Matthew 6 to give us many examples of how, why and the importance of prayer. A good example presented to the students was ACTS.....Adoration...Confession...Thanksgiving...Supplication What they should have left with: This form of praying was studied through scripture and students presented examples of how they can use this in their own prayer life. There was discussion on the obstacles and hindrances to prayer they face. Students were encouraged to use ACTS in the coming weeks when they pray. Next week: We will conclude the study of prayer with any questions the students may have on prayer.
Middle School Youth Group -- February 17, 2010
Lesson Theme/Topic: Wednesday nights lesson continued with our "Scary, Gross and Weird Stories from the Bibel". Our story this week was from Numbers 22:1-41, about a king named Balak, a prophet named Balaam and a donkey that talked. We told the story using this.
What they should have left with: We talked about doing only what God wanted us to, and the roadblocks that sometimes get in the way of us hearing God's voice, and what we can do about those roadblocks.
Next week: We will be talking about Jael putting the tent peg through the temple of Sisera, the commander of the army that was coming against Israel.
E-Klub- February 17, 2010
Lesson Theme/Topic: We talked about living God's way. Our scripture was from Luke 6:17-26; Jesus taught that God blesses people even when life is hard. He warned people about the dangers of wealth.
What they should have left with: Christians do not live God's way to get recognition. We do it because that's how he wants us to live. We also learned that living God's way means that while can can be sad about things, God wants us to be happy with what we do have, and not to focus on what we do not have.
Because of the Super Bowl this past week, we were missing about half of our group. We decided to have a chill-out night; we played a card game called "President/Vice-President". We also had a time of prayer in our small groups. This Sunday night, Monna Kreher begins our study on prayer. The Take Home for this week is to the right.
Middle School: Wednesday Night
Last night, we talked about the 10 plagues that God sent on Egypt to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelite people go. Each of the 10 plagues could be related to one of the Egyptian gods which means as God brought the various plagues upon Egypt, he was revealing to the Egyptians that there gods were meaningless. It was also an opportunity to communicate the truthfulness of the Bible. One of the pretty tough questions asked:
If God knew that Pharaoh would not let the slaves go until the last plague, why did He stop the others?
Next week, we'll be talking about Balaam and his talking donkey. Take Home at the right.
e-Klub: Wednesday Night:
Wednesday's lesson was from Luke 5:1-11 Jesus asks Simon to cast his fishing nets into the water, even though Simon had fished all night with out catching any fish. Simon obeyed and caught so many fish that his nets began to rip.
In all our centers we re-enforced how Simon, even though he'd fished all night, did what Jesus asked him to do. He followed instructions he was given by Jesus. Just as we should.
In Surprise Station the children had to work together to put a puzzle together with out seeing what the picture was to look like. Then they got to see the picture on the box and they were able to try again. Because they followed instructions, or the picture on the box, they were able to accomplish their goal.
In Snack-It Cafe the children ate gold fish while hearing the story again.
In Games the children ran relay races using pop bottles. Again needing to work together as a team and following directions. Then they separated into partners and were given coins. One partner laid the coins out in a pattern. Then they mixed them up and the second partner had to arrange the coins back into the same pattern. Then they traded jobs.
This past Sunday was the final week of our "What is the Bible?" portion of our study on Discipleship. We are using the last night of these topics to answer the questions that the students have. We talked about the following questions:
How do we know the Bible is true when compared to other religions?
Where is the original Bible?
Did dinosaurs and people coexist?
What about things like “The Chronicles of Narnia”?Are they inspired?
Most of our time was spent on talking about the truth of Christianity. The discussion was good and carried over into our small group time. Next week's topic is "A Disciple is Engaged in Prayer." The Take Home is available on the right! Ask your high schooler how they're doing on the work.
Middle School:
Steve Novak, one of our youth leaders, wrote this week's recap for middle school night.
This Wed night began as a review of last week. We talked more about God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and more specifically what God did to Lot's wife when she looked back. Was it appropriate, too harsh, just plain weird, or something else. The responses were again pretty amazing, nobody taking the easy way out. All the answers came an explanation with even asking them.
We talked about God being merciful and just in the things he does. We did an activity that called for aluminum foil to be smeared with Crisco. We had the students write their thoughts about God's character on their pieces of foil. There was..loving, grace, perfect, holy, understanding, serious, nice(more than once)..to name a few. I thought it was a good exercise. When that was done, we wiped off part of the foil to represent a distinction between a fuzzy description of God and seeing Him more clearly. Note: a mirror was originally intended to be used, and the point may have been hammered better, but this got everyone involved.
Finally we split into small groups. Unfortunately there was not enough time to finish all the discussions we were having, but they were good discussions..some new and some from earlier in the night. And the question of the night was an honest one which I feel is awesome...Who wrote the books in the Bible? I am just pleased how comfortable the student was to ask that question?
E-Klub:
Finally, an addition. Moving forward, we'll be posting a recap of our Children's Ministry program (e-Klub) on this recap. This week's recap is written by Corie Novak, our Children's Ministry Team leader:
Tonight's lesson was from Luke 4:22-30
"The Jews were angry when Jesus claimed to be the Messiah and warned them of the consequences of their sins. They tried to throw Jesus off a cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and escaped." (this is the "point" from the lesson guides)
There was a bit of singing in the beginning, a "fun fact" that was given and there was welcome time where the kids went around and high fived friends. Tonight there were two kids chosen to help with the skit. They held up a "boo" card and a "cheer" card. The children then listened to the Bible story on CD. When the narrator talked of the crowd all the children were to boo. When the narrator talked of Jesus the kids were to cheer.
We then divided into 4 small groups, each with 1-2 adult leaders. Two small groups then travel to different centers together. The activities we do in our centers revolve around the story from the beginning of the night. Tonight's was on trusting. We had Snack-It Cafe, where the children got to make ice cream sundaes, they read the story directly from their Bibles. We had Games, in one game they played the children put a stack of pennies on their elbow and predicted how many they could catch by flipping their arm down. The other kids had to decide to trust their prediction or not. The second game the kids paired up and stood facing each other, on one side of the room. On the other side of the room their was a child with a small pool noodle. That child was going to toss the noodle at the ones with their backs to him/her. They had to trust that their partner would move them in the correct way in order to not get hit by the noodle. The last center we did was Surprise Station. The children tried to solve brain teasers and had to trust the teacher to give them the correct answer. The first on was to take six cups placed in a row. Fill three with water and arrange in this pattern:empty, empty, full, full, full, empty. With moving only one cup change the pattern to full, empty, full, empty, full, empty. The second was trying to balance a Bible on top of a piece of cardboard. This would be a fun activity to do at home with your child.
Our ultimate lesson the kids took home tonight was that they can ALWAYS trust in Jesus, no matter.
