The Unforgiving Servant

Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids . Today we are talking about forgiveness. It's something the disciples were finding difficult and so they asked Jesus "How many times do I have to forgive someone? Seven times?"

Jesus replied with "Seventy times seven". That's a really big number. In our video, some children are going to tell us the parable that Jesus told to explain forgiveness. It's called the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.

In this parable Jesus was reminding us how much God has forgiven us. When Jesus died on the cross and came back to life on Easter Sunday, he was taking the consequences of all the things we get wrong. 

Jesus forgave us for everything. 

If someone does something wrong that upsets us, it can be hard to forgive them but if we remember how much God loves us - and them, then it can become easier. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes and forgiveness of each other is an amazing way to show love in our families and with our friends.

Sometimes, people can get things wrong and they need help to know that they are making the wrong choices.  If we are being bullied at school, we can forgive that person for their wrong actions but it doesn't mean we have to let them carry on. We can ask adults we trust to help that person make good choices. God can help us forgive that person, which would mean that we wouldn't be carrying around anger and upset towards them in our hearts.

Our colouring page today has a Bible verse about forgiving each other. It asks us to BEE kind and loving.You can download it here

Target games

When Jesus replied to the disciples that we should forgive others seventy times seven (not really a jillion and twenty!), he wasn't really talking about Maths. We could remember our story today by making some target games. Maybe we could make the points from the 7 times table? Maybe the highest score could be seventy times seven. Do you know how much that is?

Here are some great ideas to make target games...

Basket targets

Target Golf

Maybe you could go outside and make a nerf target game?

Nerf targets

Prayer

Today, we are going to spend some time thinking about what forgiveness is like. 

If we choose not to forgive someone, it can be like carrying around a big weight in our hearts.

Forgiveness experiment

You will need:

Two people

A backpack

Some food tins (or something similarly heavy)

One person will put the backpack on their front. The other person will say "Will you forgive me?" and the person wearing the backpack says "No". Every time they say "No", the person wearing the backpack adds a tin to the bag. Repeat a few times until the bag is feeling heavy.

Now the second person asks "Will you forgive me?" and the person wearing the backpack replies "I forgive you" and removes a tin from the bag. Repeat until the bag is empty. What does it feel like now all the tins have gone?

If we choose not to forgive, we are carrying that upset, hurt and anger around inside and it is a like a big weight. It can be hard to let it go, but God is there to help us.

Spent a few moments quietly talking to God about forgiveness. We can say sorry to God for things we have got wrong. We can thank God that he has forgiven us. We can ask God to help us say sorry to the people we might have hurt or upset. We can ask God to help us forgive people who have upset us.

We've got  new song today about when things don't go well we can trust that God is bigger and stronger than anything that could go wrong. Could you make up your own actions to this song?

We'd love to see pictures of your target games. You can send them in following the instructions in the right hand column. Thanks for joining in us today and we'll be back for a dance on Wiggle Wednesday.

God's love is the reason

It's Wiggle Wednesday and we've got a great song to dance around to today. It's from a band called Unspoken and it's all about how when things are difficult, God's amazing love for us is the reason to keep on believing in Him.

We hope you enjoy having a dance around to this song.

The Prodigal Son

Hi everyone and welcome back to Christchurch kids. Today we are looking at a very well known parable that Jesus told called The Prodigal Son. I have heard this parable lots of times but only recently I realised I didn't know what 'Prodigal' meant. I looked it up in the dictionary and it means 'someone who spends large amounts of money, time, energy etc, particularly in a way which is not very wise.'

Let's listen to the parable and find out about the son who wasn't very wise.

There are so many parts of this story. 

There is the prodigal son who thought he knew better than anyone else and made some very unwise choices with how he spent his money and his time. Eventually, he realises he needs to come home and say sorry.

There is the father, who is patiently looking out for his son and is overwhelmingly excited when his son comes home.

There is the older brother, who feels a bit grumpy that his little brother is getting lots of attention!

Parables tell us more about God and about us. What does this story tell us?

The prodigal son is someone who chooses not to follow God but then realises that they want to come to God and say sorry. What does God think about that? God is like the father in the parable. He is looking out for people to come to him. When people pray to Him and say sorry, He is so excited that he wants to throw a huge party and give them lots of presents! The big brother feels like he has been trying his best all along and is jealous that his little brother made mistakes and gets a party when he says sorry. Do you think the big brother had never made mistakes? Do you think the big brother should forgive his little brother too? Maybe we can all be like the big brother sometimes. What do you think?

The prodigal son goes on a big journey. He leaves his home and travels to another place (maybe a big city) where he spends all his money. He leaves that place and ends up working on a farm with the pigs before he realises he wants to go home. We can make a board game about going on a journey. You could base it on the parable of the Prodigal Son. You can add instructions to the squares as you go round. Find a dice (or two), write some rules and find some playing pieces. Get playing!

The father in the parable shows us God's amazing love and forgiveness. What does God's love look like? It's better than even our best tries at loving each other. The Bible describes what God's love is like in 1 Corinthians 13. It's our colouring page today and you can download it here

There's a great Chat Mat about the Prodigal Son that can be downloaded, coloured and chatted about with your family. You can download it here.

Prayer

We are going to be using some kitchen foil to help us pray today. 

From Flame:creative

Take a piece of kitchen foil (not too big)

Hold your foil shiny side up and thank God for all the good things you have in your life.

Gently scrunch the foil up (not too tight as we are smoothing it out again). Think about the times when we have got things wrong and say sorry to God.

Smooth out your foil again. Thank God that he forgives us and loves us so much.

Scrunch up your foil into a shape that reminds you of someone or something to want to pray for. Maybe it could be a letter to remind you of someone's name.

Our Prayer Wall

We have a  brand new Prayer Wall at Christchurch. Have you seen it? You can find out all about it here.

Our song today reminds us that God is bigger than big! He made the sky, the oceans and the trees and His love is bigger than it all. Can you remember the actions?

Thanks for joining in today. We would love to see your board games and foil prayers. You can send us pictures using the instructions in the right hand column. We hope you have a great week and pop back for a dance on Wiggle Wednesday.

Our Prayer wall

We have a brand new project that we can all get involved with. Here's a message from Kathy to tell us all about it.

Hi young people at Christchurch! 

Have you seen that the wall has been rebuilt outside Christchurch? We’ve decided to turn it into a prayer wall for all of Clevedon to see! 

We would love you to write a prayer on the template provided (please don’t write your name on it) and then get an adult to laminate it or put it in a plastic wallet and then attach it to the cargo net on the wall outside Christchurch. 

You could use ribbons, string or wool; make it as colourful as you like! The prayer could be thanking God for things in our lives or asking God to look after our family, friends and community at this time. It would be great if you could colour in the template to make it stand out! We hope that this wall of our prayers for our family, our friends, our town and our world will encourage others. 

Thanks!

What will you prayer be? We'd love you to join in with our Prayer Wall.

God made everything!

Hi everyone! It's Wiggle Wednesday and we have a hilarious challenge for today. Awesome Cutlery (that's really their name) have made a brilliant song about all the things God has made - everything! 

Do you think you can sing along with it? 

Here we go...

(Maybe it's easier the second time?!)

The Lost Sheep

Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids. Today we are looking at the parable of the Lost Sheep. Jesus told a story about a farmer who had 100 sheep but one went missing. Here's a lovely animation to tell us the story.

How did the farmer react after he had found the lost sheep?

Jesus told this parable because religious leaders had started to complain that Jesus was spending time with people who made bad choices. They didn't think he should welcome people like that. Jesus told them about the farmer who left his 99 sheep to find the one that was lost. The farmer was so happy to find the sheep that he ran and told all his friends and neighbours that the sheep that was lost had been found.

Jesus was comparing the people who made bad choices to the sheep who had lost his way. He said that God is excited when people who have forgotten about God choose to come back to Him and make good choices in their lives. 

Jesus was telling us that everyone is welcome with God.

A Game

Have you ever played "Hunt the Thimble"? It's a traditional game and you may not have a thimble to play it with nowadays but you can use any small object to hide. Maybe you could hide a small sheep?

To play the game, one person hides the sheep and everyone else playing the game covers their eyes. 

No peeping now!

When everyone starts looking for the sheep, the person who hid it will give clues. If the seeker is getting close to the hiding place, the hider says, "Getting warmer" and if the seeker is getting further away, they say, "Getting colder. If they are far away, the hider can say "You are freezing cold!"

When the seeker gets really close, it's fun to say "You're really hot now!" or "You're boiling hot!". 

Jesus talked about himself as The Good Shepherd. He said that he knows his sheep and his sheep know him. He wasn't talking about actual sheep. He was talking about his followers. We are Jesus' sheep! He said that we will listen to Him and follow him and he knows us.

This is the verse on our colouring page today and you can download it here

There is a fantastic Chat Mat about the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Chat Mats are great to download and colour and talk about with others in your family. You can download it here

Prayer

We are going to spend our prayer time today listening to God, our Good Shepherd. When we spend prayer time being quiet and listening for God it can be easy for our minds to start to wander. Here is a word cloud you can look at as you are spending time being quiet. You can ask God to speak to you through the words from the parable. Maybe you can talk to someone in your family about what the words mean to you.

You can look at the word cloud on the screen or you can download it here

Our song today reminds us that God's love is big! It's big enough for everyone to join in.

As we have been talking about sheep again today, we thought it would be nice to see the singing lambs again! Look out for the cheeky grey one!

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you have a great week and we'll see you on Wiggle Wednesday.

Jump up and down!

Hi everyone! It's Wiggle Wednesday today and we have a very wiggly song to join in with today! This song has fantastic actions to join in with so we found some people to help us join in.

We hope you have great fun doing the actions and having a wiggle!

The 10 Talents

Hi everyone and welcome back to Christchurch Kids. Today, we are going back to the parables Jesus told. We are looking at the parable of the 10 talents. Our story today comes from the book 'Diary of a Disciple'. It's a retelling of the book of Luke in the style of the 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'. It's a great read and at Xstream on Sunday mornings we have been completing a fun activity book based on it.

Here's our parable for today.

What was Jesus telling us when he told this story? We are all given talents (things we enjoy and are good at) from God. Did you notice that each servant wasn't given the same amount of coins? God gives us different talents from each other. The King in the story was pleased when the servants had used the coins and made them grow. God wants us to use our talents so that we can spread His love to others.

Who's this sharing her talents? It's Supergranny! She's sent us a message all about how we can share our talents too.

Thanks Supergranny!

While we are thinking about what our talents are, you could draw a picture of yourself and write down all the things you enjoy doing around it. You could add ideas of how to share your talents with others too.

We know we are all different and have different talents to share. There is a great guessing game that is based on the idea that we are all different. You can make your own version of this game!

The instructions are here

Sometimes it's not an easy thing to use our talents to help others. We might be feeling really tired when God shows us someone we could help. Maybe we feel a bit nervous standing up for someone else and being a good friend to them. The great news is that God doesn't give us these gifts and then leave us on our own. He is always there to help us. Here is our colouring page for today that tells us that with Jesus' help we can do so many good things.

You can download it here.

Prayer

We are going to use our prayer time today to thank God for the special talents he has given us. 

You can make an envelope from a heart shaped piece of paper (or wrapping paper) just like this...

Write down the things that you know you are good at and pop them into the envelope. You can ask God to show you new ways to  use these talents to help other people and spread His love to others.

Our song today is all about how God created us. He even popped the freckles on our faces! Sing along and see if you can do the actions too.

Thanks for joining us today. We would love to see your crafts you have been making. You can email pictures to us using the instructions in the right hand column. We hope you have a great week and we will see you again for a dance on Wiggle Wednesday. 

The Fruit of the Spirit

Hello! It's Wiggle Wednesday and I hope you are ready for a silly song! On Sunday, we were celebrating Pentecost when the Holy Spirit first came to the disciples. We've got a happy song today about the Fruits of the Spirit. We hope you have fun singing along.