Unit: Living to Love
Session Title: The Church Sent Help
Life Point: People serve others because they love Jesus.
Life Verse: “All the nations You have made will come and bow down before you, Lord, and will honor Your name.” Psalm 86:9
Weekly Bible Verse: “But serve one another through love.” Galatians 5:13b
Bible Passage: Acts 11:19-30
Extras from LifeWay (GREAT Ideas Here): Click here
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Way to Introduce the Story
Explain and discuss “encouragement” (to do or say something that gives someone courage or confidence). Older children might look this up in the dictionary. Give each child a piece of pa-per and pencil. Explain that they have three minutes to list as many encouraging words or phrases as they can. Encourage them while they are writing! That will give help give them words to list too. At the end of three minutes see how many all the children came up with. Younger children can just call out phrases and you can write them on the board. If you give a prize to the one who has the most phrases be sure to encourage them and also give a prize and encourage the other students!
“There is someone in the book of Acts who was so good at encouraging people that his name actually meant ‘son of encouragement.’ The church in Jerusalem asked him to go to a new church in the city of Antioch and encourage them there. Let’s listen to the story…”
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Activity: What’s the Difference
Bring pictures of flowers from books or magazines or allow your class to cut some out of magazines. Tell your class that you want to show them something very special that God makes for all of us to enjoy. Briefly show them the pictures. Then bring out real flowers and pass them around the room. Ask the children to tell you the difference between the pictures of flowers and the real ones.
Explain to your class that the world has a lot of opinions about what a Christian is, but unless they have actually seen a Christian that has surrendered to Jesus and is filled with His Holy Spirit, they have only seen pictures; they have not seen the real thing. In order to make a difference in the world, we need to let Jesus make a difference in us.
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Craft: Offering Satchel
All the instructions and pieces for this craft are on the pdf attached below. You will need to scroll down a little bit in order to get to the activity. The materials to be printed for it are at the end of the PDF.
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Activity: Growth Circles
Supplies:
basket type coffee filters, washable markers, spray bottle filled with water
Do:
– Read Acts 11:19-21
– Tell the children because the disciples shared their faith with others, the church grew
– Read Acts 11:22-23
– Tell the children God sent Barnabas to help the growing church. He organized the church and continued to preach, and the church continued to grow.
– Give each child a coffee filter. Have the children press the filter down like a circle.
– Allow the children to choose their favorite color of washable marker.
– Have the children draw a symbol of our faith on this circle. Ideas of symbols are fish, butterfly, lamb, shell, or dove.
– Spray the filters with water. The colors will run and bleed as they to grow.
– Tell the children just like these colors spread out, the love of God spread as the Christians shared their faith with one another. In fact, they shared more than words; they shared food and other gifts, as they brought offerings for others in need.
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Game: Clothespin Relay
Hang a 2 clotheslines in your room. Have clothespins ready on the line. Make 2 sets of cards for each of the words in the life verse (older kids) or weekly bible verse (younger kids). Mix up the cards.
Divide children into two groups. Give each group a set of cards and assign them to a clothes-line. Have children race to see which group and pin the verse in the right order first.
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