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Sunday school / Children's Chapel idea for the Day of Pentecost

The power of the Holy Spirit        

 Holy Spirit Flashlight

Idea for Children’s sermon: Show the children a flashlight and demonstrate how important it is to have batteries inside. The flashlight needs the power from the batteries to make the light shine and do its job. In the same way, the Holy Spirit in us gives us power to shine the light of Jesus Christ and do what God wants us to do.
 
Object lesson items: A flashlight and batteries.
 
Complete children’s talk:  Good Morning Children. Do you know what special day it is this Sunday? This is Pentecost Sunday. It’s the time when were remember that Jesus / the Father sent the Holy Spirit to live inside believers. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come into the lives of those who followed him. Many years ago followers of Jesus gathered together on a special day called Pentecost. Then all of a sudden the Holy Spirit of God came upon the people and they received new life and power to shine the light of Jesus in the world. That same Holy Spirit can give us power today to live for Jesus. This morning I want to show you how important the Holy Spirit is. Do you see this flashlight? How many of you have flashlights at home? What do you think will happen if I turn on this small switch? OK. Let’s try. Hmmm. Nothing is happening. Can you make it work? (Give the flashlight to the children.) What do you think is wrong? (Someone will mention that there are no batteries.) Open up the flashlight and look inside. You’re right. It’s empty inside. Do you think it is important for a flashlight to have batteries inside? Right. The batteries give power to the flashlight to make it shine. Without that power inside the flashlight just doesn’t work. Even though batteries are not a living person like the Holy Spirit, batteries still remind me of the power of the Holy Spirit. In the same way a battery gives power to make a flashlight shine, the Holy Spirit gives power to believers to shine the light of Jesus. The bible says that by ourselves we can’t love people very well and we can’t live the life that God has for us. By ourselves we are like this empty flashlight that has no power. But Jesus said he would send us the Holy Spirit who would give us power to live for God and to shine the light of Christ.
Let’s see what happens when I put these batteries inside the flashlight. Yeah! It works! We want our lives to shine like this flashlight so let’s ask God to fill us with his Holy Spirit.
 
Children’s Prayer: Dear God, thank you that you have sent us the power of the Holy Spirit. Please fill us up each day with the Holy Spirit that we would have the power to live for Jesus and let his light shine in our lives.

Copyright 2010 sundaychildrensfocus.com Andrew Hewlett   Feel free to use this on Sunday morning but please give credit to SundayChildrensFocus.com and please consider linking to this site.  -- A.H.


Holy Spirit Dove

 

Kids object lesson: Feed my Sheep Take care of my sheep      John 21:1-19    Easter 3  

 
Children’s Sermon idea: Explain to the children a time when you went away and entrusted a pet animal to someone else to look after. Describe your love for the animal and how you asked them to feed your pet and look after it. Tell the children how Jesus asked Peter to “feed my sheep” and “take care of my sheep.” As Jesus’ sheep, encourage the children to think of ways they can “feed” and “take care” of one another.
 
Object lesson Props: Items for taking cared of a household pet. (Bowl, brush, leash, treats, medicine, etc)
 
Children’s Sermon: Feed my Sheep – Take care of my Sheep
Good morning children. How many of you have a pet? Did you know that we once had a dog named “Deacon?” He was a very special dog and we loved him a lot. Here are some of the things we used to take care of him. Here is the brush we used to brush his hair. We would feed him by putting his food in this dog bowl. Here is the soap we would use when we would give him a bath. He was very special to us so we made sure we showed our love by taking good care of him. One day we had to go away on a trip and we had our neighbour look after Deacon. As we were preparing to go away we brought Deacon to our neighbour’s house along with all these things. We showed them how to feed Deacon. We showed them how to brush his hair. We gave our neighbour the leash and showed where Deacon enjoyed going for a walk. We wanted to make sure that our neighbour took care of our very special dog!
In our bible reading today from John’s gospel, Jesus said to Peter, “feed my sheep” and take care of them. Jesus wasn’t talking about the kind of sheep that have wool and go bah bah bah. Who do you think these sheep were that he wanted Peter to look after? Right! He was talking about his followers. When Jesus was talking about “my sheep” he was thinking about the people who followed him and loved him. They were people like you and me. If we are followers of Jesus we part of that flock of sheep. Jesus was going to go back to his heavenly father and he wanted to make sure Peter would feed and care for that flock of people who loved and followed Jesus. Jesus wanted to know that they were going to be fed and looked after by leaders like Peter. Our Pastor is a leader like Peter and his/her job is to look after us, feed us, and lead us in the right direction. In fact, all of us need to do what we can to care for one another. If we are Jesus’ sheep how can we care for one another? (Let the children respond) Those are some good ideas. Let’s always do what we can to take care of one another. That’s something Jesus would want us to do.
 
Children’s Prayer: Dear God, help us to feed and take care of our pets and animals. As your sheep, help us to “feed” and take care of one another just like Jesus asked Peter to do. In Jesus’ name – Amen!

Copyright Sundaychildrensfocus.com  Feel free to use this story on Sunday morning but please give credit to sundaychildrensfocus and consider linking to this site. - Blessings, A.H.
 
 

Children’s sermon on the Transfiguration Luke: 9:28-36  Mark 9:2-9

 
Children’s sermon / Sunday School lesson intro:   
 Transfiguration Kids Lesson
This story focuses on the father’s words: “This is my son…Listen to Him.” Give a short overview of the transfiguration. Have everyone in the congregation call out at the same time and give some “advise” to the children sitting up front. It’s confusing and chaotic. Explain to the children that it’s most important that we “Listen to Jesus” in the study of the bible (that contain the life and teachings of Jesus) and in prayer.
 
Objects needed: None.
 
Full Children’s Sermon: Good morning children. Today’s bible reading from Luke chapter 9 is called the Transfiguration. It is about a special day when Peter, James and John went up on a mountain with Jesus to pray. When they were there two other great leaders, Elijah and Moses, miraculously appeared beside Jesus. All three of them glowed like dazzling while lights and they began to speak to the disciples. It was quite an experience! Peter didn’t know what to do. He started running around in a fluster not knowing what to do or say. Then a voice from heaven said “This is my Son, whom I have chosen, Listen to Him.” God the Father was saying that Peter needed to slow down and listen to Jesus. I think that is also pretty good advice for us today. There are many people telling us what to do and how to live our lives. I think it is so important that we Listen to Jesus. If we try to listen to everyone we will just get confused. I’ll show you what I mean. Let’s think of a question we can ask the congregation. Here’s a question. Let’s ask the congregation how we should live and what we should do with our lives. Members of the congregation when I count to three I want you to call out together how you think these children should live and what they should do with their lives. Ready? Listen closely children. 1, 2, 3 Go. (Let the children listen to the chaos for a few seconds and then give a “time out” gesture to the congregation.) Well children. Was that helpful? No? Why not? You’re right. It was a very confusing trying to listen to everybody. It was crazy!. I think this teaches us something important. Sometimes it can get very confusing trying to listen to everyone’s advice. Sometimes everyone we talk to has a different idea of what we should do or not do. We need to remember what our Heavenly Father said to Peter up on the mountain of transfiguration when he was confused. He said to Peter, “This is my Son whom I have chosen, Listen to Him!” Listening to God’s Son Jesus is so very important. Getting ideas and suggestions from other people is important but it is most important that we listen to Jesus. We can listen to Jesus by reading about the life of Jesus in the bible. We can read what he said and taught and we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand too.
 
Children’s Prayer; Heavenly Father, thank you for reminding Peter to listen to your son Jesus. Help us to listen to Jesus as well. Life can get pretty confusing trying to listen to everybody’s advice. Through your Holy Spirit help us to hear and know your son Jesus more and more each day. Amen!

Copyright Sundaychildrensfocus.com  Andrew Hewlett  - Feel free to use this lesson on Sunday morning but please give credit to Sundaychildrensfocus.com and consider putting a link to this web site. A.H.

Kids object lesson - Give your best to Jesus. / Show you love to Jesus


Children’s message for Sunday School or Children’s church  - John 12:1-8  
Jesus anointed at Bethany
 
Children’s sermon idea: Explain to the children how Mary and Martha at Bethany showed their love to Jesus by serving him and offering their best. For visual aids have a plate with a meal (representing Martha’s gift to Jesus) and a fancy bottle of perfume (representing Mary’s gift to Jesus). Discuss with the children the fact that each child can show their love for Jesus in their own unique way.
 
Object lesson items: A fancy looking bottle of perfume; a tray with a dinner plate and food. (Idea: You could bake a cake and then serve it during coffee hour.)
 
Full Kids Sermon:
Good morning children! I want to show you some things I brought in this morning that remind us of our bible reading. First of all, look at this cake. It looks pretty tasty doesn’t it? How many of you like chocolate cake? I do too. Well, in our bible reading form John chapter 12 it says that there was a special dinner held in honour of Jesus. The passage says that Martha served the meal. It may of may not have been a cake like this but I’m sure that she was a good cook and wanted to give her very best to Jesus. This story in the bible says that Mary showed her love for Jesus with some very expensive perfume. Look at this beautiful bottle here. It has some wonderful smelling perfume. I’ll take the lid of and let you have a smell. That’s pretty nice isn’t it? The bible says Mary poured this very expensive perfume all over Jesus’ feet and the beautiful fragrance filled the whole room. Some people thought it was a waste of expensive perfume but Jesus new it was Mary’s way of showing how much she loved him. I like that story in the bible because it shows that there are different ways of showing our love for Jesus. Martha showed her love to Jesus by serving a wonderful meal in his honour. Mary showed her love by giving Jesus some very expensive perfume. I want you to think about how you could show your love for Jesus. (Sunday school lesson idea: You might want to discuss the children’s unique gifts, abilities and talents and how they might be used to serve and show love for Jesus.)
- Perhaps you could use your voice to sing a song in church.
- Perhaps you could make some beautiful drawing to honour Jesus.
- You can also show your love for Jesus by helping out others in need.
- Or, you can simply pray to Jesus and his Father and tell them how thankful you are for the great love that they have for you.
There are many different ways of showing our love for Jesus!
 
Children’s Prayer: Dear God, it’s wonderful to read about how Martha and Mary showed their love to Jesus. Help us to remember that we can give thanks to you and to Jesus in our own special way. In Jesus’ name – Amen!
 
Copyright Sundaychildrensfocus.com Andrew Hewlett   Feel free to use this story on Sunday morning but please give credit to Sundaychildrensfocus.com and consider linking to this site. A.H.

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