Well this blog post is a long time coming! But then church life isn't just messy on Messy Church Sundays! For our last Messy Church event we combined Old Testament and New. The jump off point was Exodus 3, when Moses is talking with God at the burning bush. Moses asks for God's name and God says, "I AM." Here's our fun (and somewhat messy) painting/coloring activity. Kids colored the picture, but used paint and a straw the make the burning bush.We then looked at four of the times Jesus says, "I am..." when trying to show his followers who he is. In John, Jesus uses 7 "I Am" phrases - we concentrated on 4 of them.
"I Am the bread of life." John 6:35 Kids made an ornament that looks like a slice
of bread with the Scripture verse on it. They also got to make their own biscuit from scratch, measuring each ingredient from start to finish. We baked the biscuits in batches so each child was able to eat the one they made. The kids had a lot of fun with this - and the biscuits tasted pretty good, too!"I am the Light of the World" John 8:12 For this one, kids made a pretty cool flashlight out of a cardboard tube, some duct tape, and yellow paper. We also found some actual flashlights with the Scripture verse on it so the kids could take them home. I learned the hard way on this one to check to see if the flashlights came with batteries! They didn't...oops. Live and learn!
"I am the Good Shepherd" John 10:11 For this one, the kids were able to make a game to take home with them to learn about what it means to be a good shepherd. This blogger - http://thevanderkoddes.blogspot.com/2013/10/week-7-moses.html - had a great game idea about baby Moses that I ran across looking for Moses activities. We adapted her game to make it about the good shepherd. It probably took too long to put together - but it was a good take-home activity. We also had a really cool paint project with this one involving marbles (the wandering sheep). This was messy - but oh so much fun. The kids loved it - and even our littlest participants could do this one and turn out an amazing painting.
"I am the vine." John 15:5 Our last "I am" statement was about the vine. A simple, but very cute, activity with
grape/pom-poms was a good reminder for the kids.
We had a great turn-out for this Messy Church event. We even had a special guest join us. Mr Jerry, who is one of our youth counselors here, dressed up for Moses for our Fall Festival. We asked him to reprise the role. So Moses was wandering around chatting with the kids during the activities. He stuck around for story-time, too, as we told the story of Moses encountering God at the burning bush.
We have one more Messy Church event for the school year on April 6 - a Messy Lent that also includes a hot dog lunch and Easter egg hunt after our 11:00 worship service. It will be a busy day with Messy Lent at 9:45 (in the gym this time), worship, lunch, and egg hunt.
It may be the last one of the school year, but have no fear - Messy Church will be back, maybe even in time for Vacation Bible School!!
