Faith Formation Journeys

Walking Together in Grace

Tag: Year A

  • Children’s Sermon Romans 8: 12-25 Year A, Pentecost 6 July 20, 2014

    Children’s Sermon Romans 8: 12-25 Year A, Pentecost 6 July 20, 2014

    20130822-223454.jpg Go to where you normally have the children gather and flop down with a lot of drama: sigh, play with your shoe or hair. Look extremely bored. Have the kids come join you but don’t seem too excited. Say, “well, you can come up if you want but don’t hurry we have LOTS of time.” Hopefully, the children will think this is a bit funny. When they are gathered say to them, “I’m soooooo bored. I am waiting. Waiting and waiting and waiting. Do you ever have to wait? What do you have to wait for? (Accept all answers.) Do you like to wait? Is it hard? What are some things that you do when you are waiting?

    20130822-223633.jpg Well, do you want to know that I am waiting for? Jesus! Jesus promised that he would come back and we know that’s true but we have to wait. Today in a letter that Paul wrote to some people in Rome a long time ago he is talking to them about waiting for Jesus. The people in Rome are getting tired of waiting for Jesus and think that Jesus should just come now so that they can quit waiting for the world to be made right again. But Paul says that it doesn’t work that way, even though we want it to. Paul tells them that THEY have things to do while they wait for Jesus that will help everyone learn about Jesus! What things can we do while we wait for Jesus to tell the whole world about Jesus? (Accept all answers but you may have to prompt a bit.) We can love people, we can help people, we can send cards to people in the hospital, we can make care kits for people in parts of the world who don’t have medical supplies, help with clean water, etc. We are waiting and sometimes it’s hard. Waiting for Jesus to come back, but it may be a long time so we might as well have something to do while we wait! God loves us and the whole world so much and we want to tell everyone!

    FaithCross_Worship Have a worship station with some simple service ideas: card making for shut-ins, putting together simple care packages to keep in the car for those in need (hand sanitizer, Kleenex, water bottle, granola bar, short written prayer, all in a ziplock bag). Next to the service station have a prayer wall or table where people can write prayers about waiting. What are they waiting for in their life? Where is it hard to wait? Where are signs of God’s presence with us as we wait?

    20130822-224425.jpgWaiting is hard, God. But we know that you are with us even if we are unsure. Help us to see signs of your presence in the world. Amen.

    20130822-223908.jpg +Our hope is in Jesus+ (Make the sign of the cross)

  • Children’s Sermon July 13, 2014 Pentecost 5A, Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

    Children’s Sermon July 13, 2014 Pentecost 5A, Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

    Preparation: Bring in one vegetable seed and some examples of the food that it makes – for example, bring in one corn kernel and an ear of corn.  Even better if it is a seeds that could be planted and then grow!

    For the worship station – you will need some butcher paper, a black marker, some tape and some colored sticky dots.

    20130822-223633.jpg   If you are not too pressed for time, I always think that it is fun to quickly retell this story and have the children act it out.  Don’t read it, just retell it!  Have someone be the sower, have some children be the seeds, you will need some birds, too!  All of the children can join together at the end when the seed grows and returns a good crop.  Then you can wrap up by going through a little bit of Jesus explanation.

    If this is going to be too long you can just briefly tell retell the four places the seeds fall and  jump right to the explanation below.

    20130822-223454.jpg  Wow!  That was really fun, but do you know what it all means?  Yeah, neither did the disciples!  So Jesus took a little time to explain it.  He said that sometimes, when we tell people about our faith that they might say mean things, or that we are silly for believing in any of that stuff.  That is like the seeds on the path that got eaten by the birds.  Or, maybe we hear about Jesus but we really just want to play with our iPads, or phones, or we get caught up in playing sports or acting in plays or whatever, and we think those things are more important than God.  That is like the seeds that land in the thorns and get choked by weeds and can’t grow.  Or maybe we get really excited about something at church, but it doesn’t really turn out the way we hoped, so we just decide not to go back to church anymore.  That is like the seeds in the rocky soil that don’t have good roots and just fall over.

    But then there is the good soil, and it returns a hundredfold, or maybe sixty or thirty . . . ok, wait, what does that mean?  Well, I brought in a seed to see if we can figure this out.  OK, here is a corn kernel.  It really doesn’t look like much, does it?  And it is not very expensive, either.  I could pretty easily scatter a handful of these in my garden and just hope that one or two would grow and I would probably have at least a few corn plants.  Then, each of those corn plants would grow (I hope!) several ears of corn, like this!  How many kernel are on this?  More than one, that’s for sure, maybe there are 50 or even a hundred, just like the story says, and this is just one ear of corn!  All this from a tiny, inexpensive seed.

    Jesus is saying that our faith, and the faith we share with others can be like that, too!  Some of it might not grow, for all kinds of reasons, but if even the littlest part of our faith takes root in ourselves or in someone else it will grow beyond anything that we can imagine.

    FaithCross_PrayALT God of Creation, we praise and thank you for sowing seeds of faith in us.  Help us to continue to scatter the seeds of our faith knowing that faith will not always grow, but that when it does it will be amazing!  Amen.

    FaithCross_BlessALT +Go and be Good Soil and a faith sower +

    FaithCross_Worship The general idea is to create something big out of little pieces, so this could take many different forms!  I will go through the example of making sticker flowers with round colored stickers, but if could be a whole congregation Lego project, or a kick off for a summer food drive, or school supply drive.

    For the flowers, tear off a big sheet of butcher paper or art paper.  If can be whatever color you want (green would match the season!)  Then draw a couple of flower stems, make them big, and add leaves and a block circle at the top that will be the center of the flower.  Invite people to stick a dot on the paper to help build a large colorful flower around the circle at the top of the stems.

    Before they put the dot on the paper, ask them to think about what keeps their faith from growing?  Then have them categorize it as P (path), W (weeds), or R (rocks) and write that letter on the dot.

    Some examples might help people decide – for Path it might be things like the way other Christians behave, or hearing that believing in God is silly or stupid.  For the Weeds think of things like money worries, sports teams, clubs, video games.  For rocks think of disappointments and missed expectations.