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This week’s passage: Luke 2:41-52
PREPARATION
Have a large piece of paper with an outline of a church building on it and draw a thick line down the centre. You will need: pens and writing equipment, blank pieces of paper (enough for each young person), post-it notes and a box full of items associated with church (eg a Bible, a book of liturgy, a hymn book, communion plate and cup, coffee and biscuits, the collection plate).
CHURCH CHARADES
5 mins
Use your box of items associated with church. Ask the young people to reach in and pick an item (making sure only they can see it) one at a time. Using only their body, with no words or sounds, ask them to act out the item as the rest of the group guesses what it is. Alternatively you could get them to describe the item without using any ‘churchy’ words.
OUR CHURCH
10 mins
Open the session with the question, ‘What does our church look like?’ Ask the young people to imagine looking at your church through the eyes of a visitor or stranger: ‘If a stranger walked into our church right now, what would they see?’
Discuss some of the positives and negatives of your church. Write these down on the outline of the church building, with positives on one side, and negatives on the other. If they are struggling, remind the young people of the four key elements mentioned in the theory sessions (worship, community, connectedness and mission). How does our church embody each of these elements well and where do we fall short?
KEY POINT
No church is perfect. They all have challenges and flaws, which is just as well because we all have challenges and flaws too. Thankfully, Jesus loves us just as we are, including our imperfections.
ASKING QUESTIONS
20 mins
Read Luke 2:41-52 together, emphasising verses 46-47: ‘They discovered him in the temple, sitting among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.’
At this point in his life, Jesus was a teenager. He actively sought out the temple leaders and had conversations with them. He asked them questions. Ask the young people: if you could ask your church leader questions about our church, what would they be?
Perhaps try and arrange a meeting with someone in your church leadership. If this isn’t possible you could pass on the young people’s questions, and bring written answers back next week. What do they think are the positives and negatives of your church? Are there any aspects of worship, community, connected-ness and mission that they would like to see expressed more fully?
KEY POINT
It can be unnerving to put yourself out there and ask a question, to admit that you don’t know an answer. But we only learn more about God, our church, our community and our lives by asking questions.
CHURCH AND ME: PART ONE
10 mins
During your discussions you may have found that some of you have different likes and dislikes about aspects of church. Encourage the young people to talk about their differences, for instance some might love sung worship, while others may find it awkward. Some might enjoy listening to talks or messages, while some might find them boring.
Hand out a piece of paper to each young person and invite them to draw a line across it. With this line representing their life so far, encourage them to annotate their experiences of church on it. Use examples such as, ‘I started going to Sunday school when I was five,’ or, ‘When I started playing guitar I became more interested in worship music.’
KEY POINT
Your faith journey is unique and important. Think about the Bible, and how messages are told through stories such as Jesus and his parables. God did not send down a book of outlines, lectures or theology. His book starts with a story. The Bible is filled with the most powerful stories we will ever read or hear, but it isn’t just a storybook. It is God’s testimony to each of us. Your testimony is important, and we are all called to share our testimony and our story of what God has done in our lives.
CHURCH AND ME: PART TWO
5 mins
Share these timelines together as a group, encouraging the young people to reflect on what has been important to them and to be thankful for the positive effect that being part of a church community has had on their life and discipleship.
Explain that even though later in his life Jesus was very critical of the temple, he still took time to be part of it and see the community. Even though there may be parts of our church that you don’t enjoy, look around at the people who do connect to God through these things. Be thankful for their faith and their relationship with God. God created us all differently; just because we have different opinions doesn’t mean that we are right and others are wrong.
PRAYER
10 mins
Take the box full of items associated with church: a Bible, a book of liturgy, a hymn book, communion plate and cup, coffee and biscuits, the collection plate etc. Use these as prayer stations, by either setting them around the room, or sit together in a circle and pass each item along.
Think about the elements of your church these items represent. Invite the young people to write prayers on the post-it notes, thanking God for each of these parts of the life of your church. Challenge them to think of those who connect with God through the different elements, even if they personally struggle to. Thank God that he has made us all different and created different ways to connect with us.
