Here’s my plan for tonight, the 2nd session of the year. I was away for a few days, so I didn’t get to plan for this session as early as I usually hope to. But don’t we all face this from time to time? Anyway, here’s the plan:
The theme (BIG idea) is “God Reveals Himself to us through his Son, Jesus Christ.” I will emphasize the notion that Jesus reveals to us who God is.
- First, we meet in church for an opening prayer service which will last about 30 minutes. All told, I’ll probably have about 35-40 minutes left by the time we get back to class.
- As they enter, I’ll be handing them a “quiz” about week one: 6 questions that review things like how to correctly spell my name, how to repond to “this is the day the Lord has made,” what we said about God last week (we can trust him)….all very simple and meant to be fun…no grading involved.
- We’ll quickly review the quiz questions and answers.
- Next, I’ll invite anyone who brought a personal symbol for the prayer center to show us what they brought and to say a few words about it.
- We’ll then stand for prayer: “This is the day the Lord has made,” followed by signing our foreheads, lips, and hearts, followed by passing the candle for prayers of thanksgiving or petitions.
- We’ll play a brief game called “Revealing Moments.” Basically, I found a small poster of a popular teen celebrity. I’ll cover the identity of the celebrity with index cards on which I’ve printed numbers (1-20) on the side facing up and words from the 1st part of the Nicene Creed (that I asked them to memorize) on the side facing down. It’s basically a memory game: each student will take a turn choosing 2 numbers and I’ll turn them over to reveal the words. If they “match” (the words go together in the Creed) then I will remove those 2 cards, revealing some of the face of the celebrity and that student can attempt to guess the correct identity. You can only take a guess if you make a match of cards. I will have a copy of the 1st part of the Creed on display to help them along (I have my doubts that they will have memorized it!)
- When we’re done, I’ll explain that last week we talked about how we can trust God the Father but that the question is, “why? Who is he that I should trust him?”
- We’ll listen to Joan Osborne’s song “One of Us” in which she cynically sings about what it would be like if God were one of us. I use this to explain that God IS one of us: he revealed himself to us in Jesus who became one of us!
- We’ll read from the text book about how God reveals himself to us in and through Jesus. I’ll use the ball toss for this once again.
- One of the side bars in the text we’re reading is about the famous verse, Jn3:16 “God so loved the world…” For our reflective prayer, I’m going to send them to their sacred space for some quiet time (some instrumental music in the background) to take to heart (memorize) this short verse that I’ll provide for them on a small slip of paper.
- To end, I’ll see if anyone has already memorized the passage and then emphasize that since God loves us so much that he became one of us and lived among us in Jesus, we should imitate him and spend some quality time with someone who needs love this week. This will be their assignment for the coming week: to spend some quality time with someone who needs love.
Best wishes to you all with your classes this week. Please pray for me as I will pray for you!
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