Rocky’s Plaice for 11 to 14s
Day 2
Pentecost
Acts 2:1–17
Aim: to understand the biblical concept of being filled with the Holy Spirit
Starter
Promises game
What you need
• Envelopes
• Small pieces of paper, some with ‘Promise keeper’ written on and some with ‘Promise not kept’
What you do
Before the session, think of promises that you could make to your group: some easy to keep and some you can’t keep. For example, ‘I promise to give you a Mars bar’, ‘I promise to make you a cake for tomorrow’, ‘I promise to take you to Disneyland Paris’ or ‘I promise to write you into my will’. Write each promise onto an envelope. Then place ‘Promise keeper’ slips into the envelopes of the promises you intend to keep and ‘Promise not kept!’ slips into the envelopes of those you can’t keep. If you can, try to have a more outlandish promise that you can keep.
Play a number of simple races: running, hopping, egg and spoon. Have enough different races so that everyone has a chance of winning. Explain that the winner of each race will win a ‘promise’. (Do not reveal at this point that you are not necessarily going to keep your promise!)
When everyone has won a promise, ask the group to open their envelopes. Discuss how the people feel who have a promise that is going to be kept, and how the others feel, now they know their promise won’t be kept.
Go on to talk about discovering a promise today that God kept and what that meant for Jesus’ followers, and what it can mean for us.
Main course
Challenges
What you need
• Resource page 3, cut up into sets of challenge cards
• Bibles
What you do
Get everyone into small groups of three or four young people and give each group a challenge card. They will need to work together on two challenges:
Challenge 1: a foolproof way of communicating a message to every person in the whole world.
Challenge 2: a foolproof way of getting everyone to change their lives in response to what they have heard.
How could they achieve these two things? What tools would they use? Give them a few minutes to think of their solutions to these challenges.
Ask for feedback from the groups. Be positive about any creative solutions.
Say that God had similar challenges. Encourage the group to listen for how God achieved his challenges with the first Christians.
Challenge 1: a way of communicating the message of the good news of Jesus to the whole world.
Solution: Jesus’ followers were sitting in a room when the Holy Spirit showed up spectacularly. Each follower was filled with the Holy Spirit and he enabled them to spread the message.
Bible verses to read: Acts 2:2–4
Question: What would be the best way to describe the work of the Holy Spirit in this event?
Challenge 2: a way of enabling people to change their lives radically because of what they’d heard.
Solution: The giving of the Holy Spirit to all the disciples, filling them with God’s Spirit.
Bible verse to read: Acts 2:33 (last sentence),38,39,43–47
Question: What would be the best way to describe the work of the Holy Spirit in this event?
Help the group reflect on the passage, by asking the group how they may have felt before the Spirit came, then after they had been filled with the Spirit. Look at the passage to see how the followers’ behaviour changed because they had been filled.
Dessert
Prayer with percussion
What you need
• Selection of songs (see below)
• Musicians and instruments, or backing tracks
What you do
Introduce the group to ways of producing a gentle rhythm – finger clicking, light clapping, patting their palms on their thighs, and so on. Practise a few changes of pace and volume.
Start a quiet rhythm and ask a volunteer (with a loud voice) to read Acts 2:17–21 over it. Build the rhythm gradually, so that by verse 20 the noise is loud and the reader almost has to shout. Then take the volume back down again.
Continue the rhythm and invite anyone who wants to, to thank God for the gift of his Holy Spirit. Go straight into singing songs such as: ‘Come, Holy Spirit’, ‘He is the Lord’, ‘Holy Spirit, we welcome you’ or ‘O let the Son of God enfold you’.
Leave a tip
Painting
What you need
• A4 paper or card – one sheet of black and one white per person
• Scissors
• Paint and brushes
What you do
Give each person a sheet of white and a sheet of black A4 paper or thin card.They should cut a small rectangle out of the centre of the black paper, making it the size they want their finished piece of work to be. The easiest way to do this is to fold the black paper in half and cut the rectangle out of the centre. This is their picture frame.
Invite everyone to create a very small image on the white paper or card (using colours and media) that represents their response to what they have learned about the Holy Spirit. Explain that they will be covering most of the white sheet with the black frame so, if they have a personal, confidential response, they can place it in a position where no one else will see it, but any response they are happy to share will be viewed through the hole in the centre.
Get the group to make up their pictures by gluing the white sheet on to the back of the black frame. Display them. Wander around and look at each response. Invite anyone who wishes to explain their work to do so, but make it entirely voluntary.
You may wish to carry on with the journal activity started in Day 1, instead of this painting activity.