Faith Formation Journeys

Walking Together in Grace

Category: Children’s Sermons

  • God’s great joy! Christmas Eve Children’s Sermon on Luke 2

    God’s great joy! Christmas Eve Children’s Sermon on Luke 2



    Bring the children forward and have a plain amazon box.

    I’m sure you recognize this! It’s an Amazon box! We seemed to have many of these come to our door this week! And I’m sure you did too! Every time a box came to our home, it was a reminder that someone who lived far away in our family or from our friends was thinking of us and we are not alone! Now, the plain box itself is one thing, but then when we open it, the gifts inside are decorated with fun paper or bows, like this, on them. When we wrap gifts, we often think of how special that person is to us and we hope that the gift we send makes them happy. But it’s not really about the gifts. Maybe in the past you’ve received a toy that you really wanted, fun new pajamas, a new bike or gaming system and that made you happy. But toys break, we outgrow pajamas or bikes and technology will stop working. Does that mean that the person who gave you those things no longer loves you? NO! Those things made us happy, being loved never stops and that is what joy is all about. Joy is about being connected to love: people who love us: moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, friends, teachers, and that we love all of those people too.

    In our Christmas story tonight we heard an angel tell the shepherds good news of great joy for ALL people. What was that good news? Jesus was born!!! God loves us so much that God came to us as baby Jesus, to connect us to God’s love and to each other and this is great joy! Everyone, you, me, everyone here, everyone in the world, is connected to God and God’s love and are filled with Great Joy! God wanted the shepherds, Mary, Joseph and us to know that we are loved, and are God’s Great Joy. We are part of God forever. And God’s Great Joy can’t be put in a box or under our tree, It’s so big that it covers the whole world! And so as people who are God’s Great Joy-our job is to tell everyone we see that they are God’s Great Joy too! Just like we put bows on presents to remind the person that they are special, I have a bow for each of you tonight to remind you that you are special, connected to God and God’s Great Joy forever!

    Dear God, thank you for loving us and connecting us to you! May your Great Joy , through Jesus, be for all the world to see! Amen! Merry Christmas!


    +Glory to God in the highest, you are God’s Great Joy!+
  • Children’s Sermon – August 6, 2017 – Feeding the 5,000

    Children’s Sermon – August 6, 2017 – Feeding the 5,000

    Prepare: Bring a single Communion wafer or a piece of the communion bread that you use in worship.  Make sure that it’s not enough for the people gathered.  This will work even better if you can move the children’s sermon to right before Communion.

    Gather everyone together by announcing that you have food for everyone!  Once the children gather with you start counting them with a look of concern on your face.  If you are in your main worship space start counting the rest of the congregation, too.

    Uh Oh . . . I don’t think that I have enough!  All I have is this one communion wafer!  I guess we could divide it up into  little pieces , , , 

    But, this does make me think of the Gospel story we hear today.  It’s a story about Jesus feeding thousands of people with almost nothing.  Jesus blesses just a few fish and a little bread and sends his disciples out to feed them.  When they are done feeding them there are more leftovers than when they started!  I don’t think that is going to happen with this one wafer today.  I think that if we break this in half that just two people will get half a wafer.  No one will be full, and there won’t be any leftovers.

    The miracle for us today is not that this one little wafer could feed us all, but instead the love, mercy, and grace that we receive through Jesus.  The food in the story gets passed from person to person and with each person who is fed there is more food!  The Good News of Jesus’ love is the same.  The more we pass the Good News, the more people who are fed with God’s word, the more Good News there is to spread around!

    That’s our miracle today.

    Good and gracious God, your Good News is a miracle to us.  Teach us to tell the stories to the people around us.  Teach us to live out the good news in our lives. Amen

    You are filled with God’s love.

     

     

     If you can put the Children’s time right before Communion you are all set!  If not, try a blessing that get’s passed through the congregation.  Here’s how it works.  You bless two children.  They each then bless two more people, who then blesses two more, and two more, etc.  The blessing starts slow, but grows fast, and there are blessings left over at the end, way more than there were at the beginning!