Revelation: The Present Future

Week 2: Expanding Your Vision

This includes:

  1. Leader Preparation
  2. Lesson Guide

1. LEADER PREPARATION

Lesson Overview

The global body of believers in Jesus Christ is a dynamic, powerful, nearly innumerable, and profoundly multicultural collection of individuals. And when you consider the historical, global body of Christians, you begin to catch a glimpse of what awaits us in heaven! Your students will be challenged in this lesson to consider the diversity of the body of Christ locally and globally, and they’ll be challenged to let those thoughts radically change their perspective on the church.

Lesson objectives

  1. WHAT: The church is a powerful, dynamic, and diverse body of Christians all unified in their worship and love of Christ.
  2. WHY: Catching a glimpse of the nature of the global body of Christ is a way to gain a fuller, better, healthier perspective on the purpose and mission of the church.
  3. HOW: Your students will be encouraged to renew the strength of their faith based on the dynamic and powerful presence of the church.

Primary Scripture

Revelation 7:9-12

Secondary Scripture

Romans 12:4-5

TEACHING PREP

The short overview below is designed to help you prepare for your lesson. While you may not want to convey this information word-for-word with your teenagers, you’ll definitely want to refer to it as you lead.

Read Revelation 7:9-12.

This passage presents such an incredible picture of what awaits us in heaven. Not only will we be dwelling with God, we will be amidst the rest of the body of Christ. We will be among those from all across the globe, and through all time, who have professed faith in Christ. It is a seemingly infinite number of people lifting up a wave of voices to God. For a number of reasons, many teenagers think of the church solely as their local congregation. As leaders, it’s important that we help students recognize and appreciate the size, diversity, and impact of the church worldwide.

THE BEFORE & AFTER [optional]

Text Message Questions

We’ve provided a couple of different text message questions to send out to your students prior to your meeting. Feel free to use one or both of the questions below. As with the rest of the curriculum, edit these questions to fit the needs of your ministry.

  • When you think about the church, what comes to mind? Answer tonight in small group.
  • What do you have in common with a child in Kenya, a man in Thailand, and a mom in Brazil? More than you might think. Let’s talk about it tonight.

Parent Email

We’ve provided you with an email below that you can send to your parents following the lesson. Our hope is to encourage parents to continue the conversation at home. Feel free to edit and customize the email to fit your ministry needs.

Dear parents,

This week was the second lesson in our four-lesson look at the book of Revelation. In this lesson, which focused on Revelation 7, we helped students recognize that the church is a powerful, dynamic, and diverse body of Christians all unified in their worship and love of God. Students were encouraged to renew the strength of their faith based on the dynamic and powerful presence of the church.

As you go throughout the week, help reinforce this teaching in your teenager’s life by asking these or similar questions as you have the opportunity.

  • Why is it sometimes hard to remember the Christ-followers all across this world who are our spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ? What obstacles impact this kind of perspective?
  • When you think about being gathered in heaven with all the other people who have ever believed in Christ for their salvation, worshipping God for eternity, what emotions do you feel?
  • What could we do as a family to help all of us experience more of the diversity of the church?

Have an awesome week!

Revelation: The Present Future

Week 2: Expanding Your Vision

  1. LESSON GUIDE

GETTING THINGS STARTED [optional]

Before your meeting time, use your cell phone’s camera or a digital camera to take a few super close-up pictures of random objects. The goal is to mask the true identity of these objects because of the close-up nature of the images. Be prepared to share the pictures with your students by passing around your phone or camera. Also, your students will need to usecell phone cameras or digital cameras for this activity. They don’t all need one, so if only a few of your teenagers have them, you can divide your students into groups.

Welcome your students and invite them into your meeting area. Open in prayer, and then lead this activity:

Display the pictures on your cell phone or digital camera. Ask if students can guess what the objects are. Then, once they have the idea, explain to students that they will have three minutes to scatter quietly around your meeting area to take pictures of certain things. Explain that the object is to take a super, extreme close-up photo of something that makes the true identity of the object hard to guess. (As mentioned above, if not all students have cell phones or digital cameras, simply divide your teenagers into small groups so each group has at least one device.) When everyone returns, take turns seeing if any of the other students can guess the identity of the objects in each picture.

SAY SOMETHING LIKE:It’s virtually impossible to tell the true identity of something when you only see a very small part of it. We need to view the entire image to fully grasp the nature of an object. In today’s lesson, we are going to take this concept and apply it to our understanding of the church,and we’ll find the same exact principle at work.

If you came up with an opening activity, movie clip, or game that worked well with your group, and you’d like to share it with other youth workers, please email us at .

TEACHING POINTS

The goal of the Teaching Points is to help students capture the essence of each lesson with more discussion and less lecture-style teaching. The main points we have chosen are
(1)The church is a powerful, dynamic, diverse body of Christ-followers, (2)The church is called to declare the message of forgiveness through Jesus, and (3) The church expresses its love for God through worship.

Remember: All throughout these lessons, it’s up to you to choose (1) how many questions you use, and (2) the wording of the main points—keep ours, or change the wording to make it clearer for your audience.

Read Revelation 7:9-12together as a group. Consider dividing verses among your students so everyone has a chance to read.

SAY SOMETHING LIKE:This is the second of four lessons from the book of Revelation. Let’s spend a few minutes discovering some important truths about the Bible that we can find in this passage.

1. The church is a powerful, dynamic, diverse body of Christ-followers

ASK:

  • When you think of the church, what do you think of?
  • When it comes to the church, some teenagers think of their small group, their youth ministry, and then maybe the rest of their local congregation. And those are all part of the church. But if we only think of our congregation when we think of the body of Christ, what do we leave on the table? How does that limit our perspective?
  • Why is it sometimes hard to remember the Christ-followers all across this world who are our spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ? What obstacles impact this kind of perspective?
  • Look at verse 9. What stands out most in John’s description of this multitude, and why?
  • How does it feel to realize that if you’re a follower of Christ, you are linked in your faith to so many diverse people from all across the world?

SAY SOMETHING LIKE:This concept is such a faith-expanding one! If we aren’t careful, we can be small-minded when it comes to our vision of our faith family. John gives us a glimpse of how we are part of a family that is virtually innumerable. It is radically diverse. And it literally is our spiritual family. It might not seem like a big deal at first, but part of our calling as Christ-followers is realizing this great body of Christ to which we belong. We are all united.

2. The church is called to declare the message of forgiveness through Jesus

ASK:

  • Look at verse 10. When you think about the salvation made available through Jesus, what kind of emotional reaction do you have?
  • What kind of intellectual reaction do you have? What are your thoughts when you consider the life Jesus provides for you?
  • How does this universal love and appreciation for all that Christ is and has done serve to unify you with Christians all over the world?
  • In this verse, the multitudes declare the message of salvation—but why is it essential that we declare that message now to the world around us? What are some of the best, most effective ways to declare that message?

SAY SOMETHING LIKE:The church is unified through the salvation Jesus offers all those who believe in him. It unites people who would otherwise not be united in any way. It makes a family out of different people from all over the world. More than a family, the church is a powerful force in this world. And we are called to declare the message of hope, love, grace, repentance, and forgiveness with the world around us. That is a central purpose of the church.

3. The church expresses its love for God through worship

ASK:

  • This passage reveals how the multitudes will worship God and how the angels will worship God, too. Why does God value and deserve our worship?
  • Beyond singing songs, what are specific ways to worship God—especially ways that help other people understand your love for God?
  • When you think about being gathered in heaven with all the other people who have ever believed in Christ for their salvation, worshipping God for eternity, what emotions do you feel?

SAY SOMETHING LIKE:We’re unified with all the other Christ-followers in the world through Christ’s salvation. And when we are gathered with them in heaven, we will stand before God’s throne worshipping with our brothers and sisters. We will offer worship and praise because of who God is, who God has always been, and who God will always be. God’s character, nature, and plans all are unchanging. This gives us, the church, reason to worship and praise God.

ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION [optional]

Ask students to form groups of two or three for these questions.

ASK:

  • Read Romans 12:4-5. We call the church the body of Christ. What does this particular passage say about how the church is joined together?
  • Think about a task, such as hitting a baseball, cooking a meal, or walking up a flight of stairs. How do your different body parts work together to accomplish the task?
  • How is this similar to the way we as members of the church, the body of Christ, work together to serve the world in God’s name?

Bring everyone back together, and ask for volunteers to share answers to the previous questions, as time permits.

APPLICATION

ASK:

  • Do you ever feel like you are kind of on your own when it comes to your faith? Describe situations that can lead to this feeling.
  • As we’ve talked about the church, how diverse it is, and how vast it is, how has this made you feel about the other Christ-followers who are on this same journey with you? How might this give you strength to leada Jesus-centered life?
  • As we consider the reality of spending eternity with God, how does that cause you to think about people who don’t have a relationship with Christ? How can this serve as a motivation for beginning to have spiritual discussions with these people in order to talk to them about Christ and the salvation he offers?

SUMMARY

End your lesson here. Provide your teenagers with a quick summary or take-home challenge based on (1) the content of this lesson, (2) the dialogue that took place during the lesson, (3) your understanding of the issues and struggles your teenagers are facing, and (4) the big picture of your youth ministry and what your leadership team wants accomplished with the teaching and discussion time.

FOR KEEPS [MEMORY VERSE]

Encourage and/or challenge your teenagers to memorize the verse below.

After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb (Revelation 7:9).