The Easter Journey

The Easter Journey

Easter Sunday is a great day of celebration and is another opportunity for adults and children to worship and celebrate Jesus’ resurrection together. You might like to have most of the service together or worship together briefly and then have the children go out for just a short time (choosing one of the suggested activities below) and come back for the end of the service. This year’s theme is ‘A Plan for Healing’ and how through the sacrifice of Jesus, spiritual healing is available for everyone.

Resurrection Sunday isn’t about how one day we will go to Heaven - as great as that will be. It is about the opportunity and chance we have to live a new and victorious way of living with Jesus now.

Interactive Message:

This message could be used during the main service or as a separate message in a variety of settings as you explore the Easter theme with your kids, e.g. Kids Church, Kids Club during the week, or as the kids go out for a short time during the message.

For this message you will need:

· A First Aid Kit

· A prearranged volunteer dressed as a patient

· A prearranged volunteer playing a Doctor dressed in hospital scrubs (borrow from a medical person within your Corps or community)

· A person who will give the message after the role play – Story Teller.

The Doctor and the patient need to act out the following very quick role play.

The Doctor: Introduce yourself as Dr . . . . . explain that you have brought with you today your

first aid kit - start unpacking the first aid kit. (You may wish to place a dinner knife in

the kit and explain that is for surgery later on!) Go through some of the items and

play act.

Doctor asks: ‘I wonder if there is anyone here that needs a band aid or even their arm bandaged.

Now I’m rather new at this so you will just have to trust me. ‘

(At this stage your prearranged patient should volunteer and come up.)

Doctor and Patient have a discussion about where they need a bandage and what happened to them. (Just to make things funny, choose an injury that would NOT fit into the patient’s lifestyle, such as a skateboarding accident for an older person or if a younger person –‘ I was filling in my tax return on the computer and I fell off the office chair and hurt my arm.’)

Doctor starts bandaging the patients arm.

Doctor: ‘Oh, I notice you have quite a bruise on your elbow here. Does it hurt?’

The patient: ‘No, it doesn’t hurt there but my arm feels bruised near my wrist, but I noticed there is no bruise there.’

Doctor: ‘That’s strange but sometimes we don’t see all our bruises, we just feel them.’

At this stage get them to freeze.

Story Teller says:

‘In the King James version of the Bible, Luke 4:18 says, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.’

‘Did you notice that the last word was bruised?’

‘Our lives become bruised, when we do something wrong. And when wrong things are done to use, our hearts are bruised. We cannot see the black and blue bruise but we can certainly feel bruised in our hearts and sometimes the things that we have done and seen cause us to feel pain in our hearts. We feel sad and feel that our heart could break.’

Ø ‘Have you ever noticed when you get a bruise on your arm that if you knock your arm again in the same place, the bruise gets bigger and blacker?’

‘This can also happen to our heart when we doing wrong things over and over again. It also happens when we witness hurt around us. The bruise in our heart gets bigger and bigger and can become a permanent mark on our heart.’

‘But the fantastic news is that Jesus dies for our sins and three days later – He rose again to conquer and forgive the sins in our heart. He sets us free from sins and we are forgiven and healed.’

‘Jesus can take away the bruises from our hearts when we ask Him to forgive us. This also happens when we forgive others.’

‘A question that is good to ask when you feel tempted to do an act or speak nasty words, is to stop and ask yourself:

I wonder what this will do to my heart.

‘We don’t want to keep on bruising our hearts and hurting other people, ourselves or God. Jesus came to set us free and we can live a forgiven life.’

‘So next time you think you may be about to say or act badly ask yourself:

I wonder what this will do to my heart.

Activity Suggestions:

Activity 1 - Heart Activity:

For this activity you will need:

· Cardboard heart cut outs

· Textas

· Magnet strips (use old advertisement magnets if available)

Chat about the question ‘I wonder what this will do to my heart.’ What do they think this means?

Chat about things that we do that could be bad for our heart/soul. Emphasis that if we continually do the same bad things or say the same bad words this can bruise our heart and soul.

Spend time chatting about things that we do that could be good for our heart/soul. (Read our Bible, talk to God, spend time with great people etc.)

Say: ‘When you are about to do or say or see something that you are not sure of, this is a good question to always ask yourself – ‘I wonder what this will do to my heart.’

Hand out the cardboard hearts and encourage each child to write on the front of the heart, ‘I wonder what this will do to my heart.’ Stick a magnet on the back of the heart so this can be placed on their fridge at home as a reminder for the whole family.

Activity 2 - Light of the World:

For this activity you will need:

· Individual premade cupcakes – one for each person

· Icing and decorations - small eggs to place as decorations

· A trick candle (these are the candles that keep relighting every time you blow them out. They are available from party shops, sometimes from the supermarket.)

Spend time icing and decorating the cupcakes. Encourage the children to come up with their own reasons why we have eggs at Easter. (Eggs represent new life. We celebrate that Jesus came alive after three days and we also celebrate new life in Christ that is available to everyone.)

Once the children have finished decorating their cupcakes, use one of the cakes and place the trick candle on it.

Choose a child to blow out the candle.

When the candle relights itself, chat about how everyone thought when Jesus died that His light had disappeared, but it hadn’t. He was and still is ALIVE!

Prayer:

For this activity you will need:

· A packet of band aids

· A cross (big enough for the children to place their own band aid on it)

· Permanent markers

· A small Easter egg for each child

Encourage the children to write something on their band aid that they would like Jesus to heal them from. It could be as simple as telling lies, swearing, being nasty to a sister/brother or friend etc.

Explain that Jesus died to heal our sins/bruises and that when He rose again 3 days later this was a sign that Jesus was victorious over death and sin. He calls us to live a life that is victorious and helps us do this.

Ask the children to come and stick their band aid on the cross as a sign that you are handing over that sin to Jesus to forgive and heal them.

Finish by praying as a group, thanking God for forgiving and healing them through the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

Celebrate by giving each child a small Easter egg.

Home and Beyond:

It is vitally important, as leaders within our corps that we equip parents with suggestions, activities and language as they help their children to navigate their spiritual journey. A ‘Home and Beyond’ card given to each child is a great way to take the key message home and continue the conversation in the rhythm of their daily lives.

Print off the following cards and give one to each child.

HOME AND BEYOND
· Ask an adult in your family to purchase a packet of plain band aids. Encourage your family to write on a band aid something that they would like God to forgive them and heal them from. They could place their band aid in their Bible as a reminder that God has forgiven them and healed them.
· Give a friend or a family member an Easter egg and explain to them why we have Easter eggs. You may want to practice on an adult first to help you become brave.
HOME AND BEYOND
· Ask an adult in your family to purchase a packet of plain band aids. Encourage your family to write on a band aid something that they would like God to forgive them and heal them from. They could place their band aid in their Bible as a reminder that God has forgiven them and healed them.
· Give a friend or a family member an Easter egg and explain to them why we have Easter eggs. You may want to practice on an adult first to help you become brave.

1 of 4 Written by Debbie Taylor