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BACKGROUND PREPARATION

Be aware of your feelings and your team’s feelings about this issue, rather than being caught out mid-session! Prepare food for the
ritual, the songs for charades and the appropriate materials for ‘Media mash up’ and ‘ask anything’. 

 

RITUAL: COOKED MEAL

 

LOVE SONG CHARADES

10 mins

 Follow the normal rules of charades, but prepare a list of love song titles for the young people to act out and guess. The best way to do this is to split the group into two teams and have a member of a team act out the song for their own team. These could include ‘Just the way you are’ (Bruno Mars), ‘What makes you beautiful’ (One Direction), ‘Love is on the radio’ (Mcfly) or ‘Hand on Heart’ (Olly Murs). Award a prize to the team that gets the most points.

MEDIA MASH UP

10 mins 

Use this activity to get your young people thinking about where we get our ideas about sex and relationships from. Get them to write their ideas about what they’re informed and influenced by on a big sheet of paper or post-it notes, and feed back. Then get them thinking about the different beliefs we get from those places. This, together with things such as our experiences, personality, family, beliefs, and culture, forms our ‘sexual script’. Explain that our ‘sexual script’ is the collection of ideas that we have about sex  and relationships - it’s informed by our experiences, personality, family, beliefs, culture and so much more. All of us have a unique sexual script - it will impact how we think about this entire topic of sex and relationships. For some members of your group or you and your leaders, painful past experiences will be included in a sexual script. It’s important to be pastorally aware, and if young people need to step out at any point, they should be free to do so. Over the next few sessions we’ll be encouraging young people to be aware of their sexual script, and to think through what changes or additions they might want to make to it based on what we talk about.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ?

15 mins 

Separate your group into smaller groups of four or five. Give them a copy of the scenarios below and encourage them to discuss their thoughts on the issues. If they are struggling to be open, try getting them to talk about what they think their parents, teachers or friends would have to say on the issue. Alternatively, separate your group into two camps and have them debate the two sides of the controversial questions below. Get them to argue for or against even if they don’t necessarily agree with the idea themselves. These statements and scenarios are deliberately provocative - you may not agree with what they say - but their aim is to provoke conversation, rather than represent an ideal.

• Sam’s best friend has been asked to send a naked picture of themselves to their boyfriend / girlfriend. They ask Sam for his perspective. If you were Sam, what would you say?

• Chris’ brother shows Chris a porn video on his phone, and tells Chris how to access other videos just like that for free online. What should Chris do?

• Only boys masturbate, discuss.

• The Church is wrong about same sex attraction, discuss.

• God created us to need sex, discuss.

• You might not be sexually compatible with your boyfriend / girlfriend - it’s important to check before you get married, discuss.

BIBLE PASSAGE

10 mins 

Read Hebrews 4:15 to the group and say: this Bible verse makes it clear that Jesus was human just like we are. If Jesus was human like we are, he would have been a sexual being. We tend not to think that’s possible or acceptable when we think about Jesus - but he was completely human. Like us, Jesus will have had ideas about sexuality, and have been present in a culture that talked about sexuality. Jesus would have had a unique sexual script, just as we do. Ask the group to discuss these questions:

• What does it feel like to think of Jesus having a sexuality or having a sexual script?

• If Jesus had a human sexuality, why do you think we find it so difficult to think about him in that way?

• Does the Church talk about sex enough?

ASK ANYTHING

15 mins 

Say: quite often we don’t talk about sex and sexuality in churches – so we’re going to start moving towards correcting that balance over the next few weeks. We’ll be taking some time to think about what Jesus said about sex, and what his sexual script was. But we also want to make space for questions and ideas in the group.

Give your group space to air the questions they might have about sex and relationships. Make it clear that no question is too ‘out there’ or too stupid. Be creative with how you do this – you could create a questions box, get them to write their questions on post-its and stick them on a wall, or have a number they can text with their questions. Make it clear that you won’t be able to answer all these questions over the next few weeks, but that this is the start of an ongoing conversation. Tell your young people that reading these questions will help you to know how you can help them. Make sure you keep the questions to be used in later weeks.

CLOSING REFLECTION

What one thing surprised you from what was said today? What one thing did not surprise you?

TAKE AWAY QUESTION

What do you think God wants to say to you about sex and relationships?

 

KEY POINT

We’ve found that including parents in this conversation is really important. At the very least you will need to let parents and your church leaders know that you will be covering this topic. You could hold a parents evening beforehand or send out an email with some key points that you are going to cover.