“What does I AM want for Christmas?
“The Wisemen brought Him gold, frankincense and myrrh. Stupid Wisemen! What would a baby want with gold, frankincense and myrrh? For that matter, what would God want with gold, frankincense and myrrh?
“See? It turns out that God and babies want the same thing.
“They want you!”
– from the description of a sermon by Peter Hiett entitled: Christmas for God
We are currently in Spokane, WA for the Christmas holiday, visiting my wife’s family. Amanda’s parents were staying at a local hotel for a concert/dance and we went over to swim with Sari and Macie. In the hotel room, the girls are standing behind some glass in front of the shower and we are turning on the water to “surprise” them! It’s funny!
You gotta wait for the “we’re not naked” comment from Amanda at the end!
source YouTube
What you need is a somewhat symmetrical box that you can make a sort of “dice” out of. I used a box my sister sent recently that housed Christmas presents. I taped up the box, wrote the numbers 1 through 4 on four sides, then placed “Roll Again” on two sides, and then let my girls “decorate” the rest of the box.
You also need a room with four corners in it. You can choose to label the four corners or, like me, you can place a leader in each corner and have them hold up a finger to designate what number the corner is (this puts a human, relational presence to the corners and makes it fun).
Have the students pick a corner, then roll the dice. The number facing up is the corner that is out. Let kids pick a new corner and roll again. Keep going until the numbers have dwindled a bit, then have the students pick a corner one final time, however when you roll the dice, the number that is facing up, will be the corner that wins!
This was the favorite game at our Junior Followers 2011 Christmas party!
On Wednesday, December 14, 2011 we shared The Gospel with the middle school students. We used the “Two Ways to Live” story and graphics from Matthias Media.
You can view the online presentation of the Gospel here: Who will be King?
It was a powerful presentation and response. I just wanted to share how we use it and that it went really well!
source Vimeo
For the last 3 years Hayward Wesleyan Church has put on an experience during the Sunday morning service before Christmas called: March to the Manger.
March to the Manger includes a live nativity procession–shepherds and angels, Mary and Joseph and a baby Jesus, and wise men bearing gifts. The congregation is then invited to bring their gifts to Jesus. Gifts include money, things people want to give up, something sacrificial, etc.
It’s been a great tradition and a good continual discipline/practice for our church during the Christmas season.
source Vimeo
Dencity provides a color-coded representation of what 7 Billion people on planet earth looks like.
As you can see, the United States is sparse when it comes to population density. Just look at China, India, and Pakistan as well as Indonesia, central Mexico (near its capitol), and central Europe.
I live in a rural town in northwestern Wisconsin with a population of a little over 2,000 people in the city limits. Seeing a map like this helps give me perspective on what 7,000,000,000 people looks like.
Mark Wilson (my lead pastor) over at Revitalize Your Church wrote a post called “One in Seven Billion” where he referenced a handy tool from BBC where one can find out where they fit in that enormous number.
Sifteo co-founder David Merrill believes in the power of hands-on thinking. Using digital cubes, he explores how intelligent play and physical exploration with our hands stimulates cognitive learning.
Defying the idea that technology creates a passive experience, Sifteo cubes engage users with games and encourage them to play and think nimbly with exploration-oriented problem solving.
At one point in the video, Merrill talks about an experiment with Scrabble tiles where researchers allowed one group to visualize, without touching the letter pieces, how many words they could make out of 7 Scrabble letter tiles. The other group was allowed to manipulate the tiles with their hands and move them around and accomplish the same task of creating as many words as possible with 7 letters.
The group who could touch and manipulate the Scrabble tiles fared much better than the ones who had to visualize the words.
Educators know this: doing kinetic-type activities, where students are using their hands and actively doing something makes learning stick better than just cognition alone.
It’s interesting to see new innovations happening in the technology arena around “active learning.”
In our current study of the parables, Jesus further frustrates his listeners with the parable of the workers in the vineyard. As the landowner says at the end of the story: “Are you so frustrated because I am so generous?”
I think we all are (or can be) frustrated with God because he is so generous and doesn’t play by the “fair” rules we think govern our world. In God’s world, his sense of “fairness” is drastically different than ours…
Story Lesson (716.12kb, pdf)
Audio File : the audio recording did not happen this past Sunday
Video Link : the video recording did not happen this past Sunday
Video Link (12.21.08 @ vimeo.com)
Verna Kline has been in youth/children’s ministry for the past 63 years; since 1948! It’s an amazing video to watch! At one point the speaker asks “Grandma Kline”: “Aren’t you ever afraid of these ‘rough’ kids?” With utter confidence she replies: “No!”
What does it look like for someone to be a youth ministry volunteer for 63 years? Verna Kline from Pennsylvania has been working with the “kids” in her church since 1948. Listen as Tic Long interviews her about what she’s learned over the years.
HT Doug Fields
source YouTube
This is a great Christmas video! I especially like the part when one kid answers the question “who is Jesus’ father?” with: “Mike!”
source YouTube
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
– Mignon McLaughlin
Grab some scratch paper (or paper you are going to recycle), white and colored, and enough for every participant to have one (possibly two or three). Divide the group in half, one group on one side, and another group on the other side. Place a defined center line (in our case we used chairs). Hand out white paper to one group, and colored paper to the other.
The object of the game is to keep ANY paper off your side of the room and on to the other side of the room. Once the students get their paper, have them wad it up like a “snowball” and get ready to throw it to the other side. Set a designated period of time to throw the pieces of paper (in our case we did 60 seconds).
We played this game @ our Junior Followers Christmas Party (2011).
source YouTube