Youth Group Recaps: January 31-February 6 2010

High School:

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.