Tag Archive for: Children’s Church

Children’s Church Reflection (18 September)

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As the Children’s Ministry team, we cannot believe this term has already come to an end. We are confident in saying that this term has been an incredible one for the children and the teachers. This week we rounded off the teachings on who God is to us by concluding with the truth that my God is my life. In the previous weeks we discussed how God is so many wonderful things to us: our courage, faith, joy, hope etc. This week we concluded with how God is ultimately our life. God gives us life, He sustains our lives, He is so involved in our lives and because of this we can live our life for Him.

Our Part

We used a metaphor comparing us to a tree to try to emphasise how we find life in Jesus. We are just like a tiny seed. We may seem small but we have a lot of potential. If we are not seeking life from the right sources, well, then we will never grow and become who God created us to be. A seed will simply remain a seed. But, if we turn to God, find our life in the Gospel of Jesus (who represents the water and sunlight to the seed) we will begin to see growth. Eventually we will begin to grow to heights we never imagined and ultimately bear fruit for God.

Fruits have seeds that when dispersed allow more seeds to begin the journey of life and growth to become a tree; and so the cycle continues. Our children have such great potential. They have a journey of growth to live and great fruit to bear. But the source of life is essential and our only source is Jesus. In all that we do we should do it as for Jesus. Our children can live this way. In everything they do, wherever they are, they can do it with Jesus and for Jesus. There is no better life to live than a life in obedience to Jesus.

Your Part

As previous letters have mentioned, keep reminding your children who God is to them. This week’s lesson emphasised that Jesus is our source of life. Keep explaining this to them. Tell your children the Gospel and see how they respond. We never desire to see children forced to have faith in Jesus and we never want to take our children’s salvation for granted. Many children can talk about Jesus but are they finding their rooting in Him and their life in Him? Keep chatting to your children and let God reveal these truths more and more to your family.

We have loved this term and the wonderful truths we got to teach. We pray that you continue this journey with your children. Next term we will look at the Heart of Worship and the wonderful ways we get to glorify God in all that we do. We are looking forward to it.

– The Children’s Church team

Children’s Church Reflection for 5 September

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We have our hope in Jesus as an anchor of the soul. These few words have been ringing in my head and my heart (Nicole) for a few months now. In such uncertain times: the crime stats, terrorist attacks happening in the world, all the political changes locally and in America and all over the world, we can lose our hope. We become so focused on the problems that we take our eyes off Jesus and find ourselves wallowing in fear.

Anchors date back by millennia. The first anchors were most likely made out of rock. Ancient Greeks most likely used a basket filled with large sacks of sand and stone to anchor their boats. It was only in about 1813 where it got the shape which everyone knows these days.

Regardless of how the anchor has been made, its function has always remained the same. It prevents the ship from moving around when the waters are unstable.

Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this as a strong and trustworthy anchor for the souls, a hope that enters us into the inner place behind the curtain. How wonderful that God is our hope. We can put our hope and trust in Him because He keeps His promises.”

Our part
This week we focused on “God is our hope”. He is that anchor that keeps us secure. In our children’s church lesson we looked at many people in scripture who were given a promise by God. Abraham, Daniel, Esther and even the disciples. They were given promises of God’s protection, His promise that He will give us strength, His promise that He sent Jesus to save us. The amazing thing with all these characters is that God kept His promise and He still does. Knowing that God always keeps His promises and He can not lie makes it all so much easier for us to find our hope in Him.

Your part
As families let’s be encouraged to put our hope in God. Where God has given you as a family promises, write them up in your house, remind yourselves of them. Rejoice with your children that God says He will protect us, He will provide for us, He will save us, He will give us boldness and courage. Acknowledge as a family when God answers His promises and when the tough times come, put your hope in Him.

Much love! – The Cornerstone Children Church team

Children’s Church Reflection for 28 August, 2016

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One the greatest gifts given to us is also one of the hardest gifts for us to give: forgiveness. We respond with amazement and gratitude to God when we understand the love, security and genuineness of God’s forgiveness towards us. It is only because God chose to forgive us of our sins that we can embark in an intimate relationship with Him. Scripture says that while we were still enemies to God, Jesus died for all so that we could be forgiven. This was the incredible truth we taught this Sunday at Children’s Church.

Our Part

Scripture is full of stories and explanations teaching us about God’s forgiveness. We focused on the story of the prodigal son. Despite the way the son disrespected and dishonoured his father, the father patiently waited every day for the son’s return. When his hope was made a reality and his son returned, the father didn’t say, “I told you so” or, “I will think about taking you back”. The father accepted his son as his son and chose to love him completely despite what he did. This is our God to us. Our children heard about how God wants to forgive us of sins and will if we ask him.

We taught how we cannot remove our sins despite any of our best efforts. No good works can remove our sins and the consequences of our sins. Only Jesus can remove our sins from us. We used a creative analogy using a mirror to teach this (view the curriculum if interested).

We also taught that we too are to forgive others for things they have done to us. Jesus teaches us to forgive because we have been forgiven. How can we be so graciously forgiven by God and then not forgive others?

Your Part

Living in a family dynamic, we are sure that you are aware that the need to practice forgiveness can be on a daily basis. One of the best ways to teach forgiveness is to practice forgiveness. So, when your children misbehaves in whatever manner, address their behaviour, but then forgive them and let them know it. After that, don’t remind them of their wrongs and expose their errors, but allow them to move forward in the forgiveness you have given.

Help your children to practice forgiveness too. They may need to even forgive you. Don’t force your children to forgive (that isn’t real) but teach them the freedom that comes in forgiving others. Forgiveness can be difficult but God graciously forgives us and also teaches us how to forgive.

We pray that your family will experience freedom living in God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness you display to others.

– The Children’s Church team

Children’s church reflection for 21 August 2016

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It comes as quite a shock how, in society today, so many people struggle with depression. People are constantly searching to be happy and sadly they seek happiness in temporal sources. We are aware that our children face the same struggles and therefore our focus this week is how God is our Joy. God gives us joy that is greater than a temporal happiness and that cannot be taken away.

Our Part

We explained to the children how the joy that God gives to us is far greater than the emotion of happiness. Some days we may feel sad, we feel insecure or angry, but when we find our joy in who God is and what He does for us, despite how we are feeling, that joy cannot be lost. We have grown up hearing fairy tales ending with, “And they lived happily ever after.” We explained how this belief is often misunderstood. We looked at Paul in the New Testament as an example. From a sinful life he is miraculously saved and as the myth goes, “And so he lived happily ever after.” This however was not true. Paul faced prison, shipwreck, abuse, and more. That doesn’t sound so “happily ever after”. However, Paul does claim to be full of joy, knowing that his joy is found in Jesus. He was a great example of how despite what life throws at us, our joy in Jesus cannot be taken away. This joy is our salvation, our relationship with Jesus and our hope in all of His promises.

Your Part

Be aware of the emotions that your children experience and as we have taught throughout the term, remind your children who God is to them. When they are afraid, God is their courage. When they are unsure, God is their faith. When they are sad, God is their joy. Keep reminding your children who God is. As your children are challenged with emotions, help them see what it is and apply how God helps us find life and strength to move forward. And remind your children how God’s joy can never be taken away.

We hope that your joy will be made more alive in God as you see your children live in God’s joy.

– Children’s Church team

 

Children’s Church reflection for 7 August 2016

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This Sunday at Children’s Church, as we continue discovering who God is and who He has called us to be, we looked at how God is our faith. Without faith we find that we cannot be in relationship with God. It is therefore vital that we fully grasp the faith we need and the faith we are given by God. The privilege we as the teachers had is that we got to speak to children and, as Jesus emphasises, there is such great faith in children. Their will and desire to believe in a living, all-powerful God who loves us unconditionally is the perfect foundation for us to teach them more truths about our awesome God. We encourage you not to take for granted or downplay the faith your children have.

Our Part

Our emphasis came from Hebrews 2 where we are told to keep our eyes on Jesus, the perfecter of our faith. Across the sites we are teaching a series on bearing much fruit and we are clearly hearing God’s desire for us, His church, to return to intimacy with Him and, out of that place of intimacy, we can bear much fruit. This is the same emphasises God is making to our children. Our games, the stories and the craft (making binoculars at some sites) all encouraged us to remember to keep our eyes on Jesus. One of the biggest points we wanted to make was that when life gets tough, and it will get tougher for our children, only God is faithful to stay true to us and strong enough to help us. We are called to therefore keep our faith in Him.

Your Part

Your children watch you constantly and a lot of their learning comes from observation (mostly observing you). So who are your eyes on mom and dad? Our kids were taught how the distractions of this world (money, fame, objects etc.) are not worthy of our faith. Instead we are to keep our eyes on Jesus, who is always faithful and always seeking to care for us. Challenge yourself to fix your eyes on Jesus. Whatever situation you and your family are facing, let your children see and hear you declare that you will keep your eyes on Jesus. When times get tough for your children, our prayer is that their first response would be to put their faith in Jesus and rely on Him. And when we lack faith, God will give us more faith.

Help your children grow in their faith by reading the Bible more with them, point out God’s promises and His miracles, look at prophecies made over your family and your children and remind your children of all God has done. Our children will surely believe it.

The Bible is full of stories of people who become heroes because of their faith in God. We pray our children become the next generation of heroes for God’s kingdom.

– Children’s Church team

Children’s Church Reflection for 31 July 2016

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This Sunday was the second week of our new curriculum, ‘God is my God’. Before the reflection, a big well done must be given to our teachers across the sites. The heart and passion our teachers are displaying for the themes and focus of each Sunday lesson has been astounding. Your children will notice a group of explorers waiting for them in the midst of make-shift environments as they are led to seek for God as explorers themselves. Khaki, hard hats, binoculars, garden plants acting as forests are some of the ways our children are being introduced to the fun of seeking God.

Our Part

This Sunday the focus was on “God is my Love”. Our little explorers would have been encouraged to try and measure several things such as lengths of slides or the width of a window or the height of a plant, etc. However, they were then asked to measure God’s love. Although we can measure the tallest mountain and the length of the longest river, God’s love is immeasurable. What an incredible truth to tell our children. Someone loves you with so much love that that amount of love cannot even be measured. That someone is our one and only God who, as we learnt last term, wants to be called Father.

The next task was to try to understand a little bit of God’s love. We looked at how God reveals His love, how God’s love is unconditional, how God wants us to embrace His love, and how we are to show the world God’s love too.

Your Part

Firstly, it is of great benefit that you download our curriculum and use it to re-emphasise what we only have two hours to share with your children. Secondly, spend time asking your children about what they are learning, thinking about and understanding. Remind them and yourself of the memory verse. Importantly, as life happens, keep reminding them how much God loves them and how they are to love others too. This is our hope: to receive from God but then give to the world. Imagine if our children actually understand how much God loves them. Poor self-esteem, fear of not being accepted, feelings of insecurity would all vanish as they hold onto the absolute truth that they are so passionately loved by our all-powerful God.

Memory verses have been laminated and the expectation is that they can join onto a keyring which can be attached to your child’s school bag. It will be really exciting to see our kids explain these verses to their classmates.

We cannot wait to continue this exploring with your kids.

– The Children’s Church team

Children’s church reflection (12 June 2016)

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This Sunday was the final part of our ‘Jesus taught us how to pray’ curriculum and what an incredible term it has been. We have heard such encouraging feedback from our sites. Our children want to pray and are feeling confident to speak to God privately, even in a group, in small whispers and also out loud. The prayers are also reflecting sincerity and a true desire to communicate with God. It has been so wonderful to hear the testimonies from children of how God has answered prayer requests in the past few weeks. All glory to God.

Our Part

In this final week, we reminded the children of the past lessons learnt. We shared stories of how God answered prayer and even did the miraculous. We shared stories of how God revealed where a lost wedding ring could be found to how healing was given. Our children learnt how in James it says that we ought to pray, pray and pray. Pray when we are sick and well; pray when we are sad and joyful; pray because God so longs to be with us in all we experience. What an amazing God we serve.

We also used a metaphor of a sponge to tell our children how God wants to use them. Just like a dry, hard sponge feels like it lacks purpose until it has been wet and soaks up water, so we can feel useless without God filling us with His living water (His Spirit). God fills us with His presence and we get to show Him to the world like a sponge dripping out water.

Your Part

Moms and dads, your role is most important now. Prayer is not simply a topic for one term, but is a lifelong action that we need to do every day for as long as we live. Please continually speak to your children about prayer. Please continue to pray with them and ask them what they are speaking to God about. Our children have such great faith in what God is capable of doing. Let them pray, create time for them to pray, give them personal areas to pray into, and glorify God together as you witness the fruit of your prayer.

We will continue in the new term with the topic of ‘God is my God’. We are really excited for what God wants to impart into our children’s life. Thank you for a wonderful term.

– The Children’s Church team

Children’s church reflection for 5 June 2016

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“For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”

This week with our children we came to the final lines of the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught. Remember, Jesus is teaching us how to pray and also what to pray about. These final lines emphasise the supremacy of our God. This is an incredible conclusion that we are to make in all of our prayers: God is in complete control, He carries complete power and in all that happens, in however God answers our prayers, He will have the glory.

Our Part

A key point we focused on this week was the power that Jesus displayed in overcoming sin and defeating death and the grave in his resurrection. In his resurrection we find our victory and because of his resurrection we can confidently pray to God and trust him to hear and answer our prayers as he wills. We truly want our children to come to the understanding of why Jesus went to the cross and the significance of his resurrection. Once we understand the incomparable power of our God, our faith in him grows when we pray.

Your Part

Remind your children that Jesus is alive. Remind them that our God has all power and that all things are possible for our God. Because of this knowledge, we need to pray, pray and pray. Keep reminding your children of the previous lessons taught. We hope that you are seeing more life in your family prayer life. We have definitely seen great growth in our children praying this term.

There are two more weeks to go for this term which we know will be as exciting as the previous eight.

– Children’s Church team

Children’s Church Reflection for 29 May 2016

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In our lives we are constantly fighting against temptation. The world is tolerating more and more the things that God says isn’t acceptable. Our children face a difficult world with so many voices telling them what is right and what is wrong. With the desire to pursue what is of God, Jesus teaches us that we can ask our Father to help us not to fall into temptation and avoid what is evil.

Our Part

We spent some time this week looking at temptation. The reality is that temptation is all around us. We all have weaknesses which constantly get challenged. A key point we taught is that temptation is not the sin, but giving in to temptation is. We looked at the example when Jesus was in the desert and he was tempted by the devil three times. Jesus was tempted but he never sinned. From this story we also taught our children that, with God’s Word, we can overcome temptation. So when temptation comes, as it will, we can face it head on by remembering God’s Word that gives us strength and understanding, and this helps us to overcome the temptation and not fall into sin.

We taught the kids the reality that temptation will often come, the opportunity to sin is often on our doorstep, but God is with us in those moments and He wants to help us stay strong and not fall into temptation and the sin.

Your Part

This is a serious topic to discuss with your children. They need to understand the presence of temptation and the consequence of falling and sinning. It is our sin that separates us from our loving Father. Discuss with your children what temptations they face and how they deal with it. Help them understand what temptation is and how it is deceiving and leads to sin. Discuss with your children the consequences of sin.

But here is the exciting part: Tell your children the Gospel. Tell them how Jesus died for us so that when we sin we can be forgiven. Tell them that when he becomes our Saviour, all of our sins are forgiven, the ones from our past and the ones we will unfortunately commit in the future. Tell them how God has restored relationship with them so that we can call Him Father and how now, by allowing Him into our life, He helps us not fall into temptation and sin. If your child grasps this good news, the Gospel, pray for them to receive Jesus into their lives. What a privilege. If your children are still too young or not quite grasping the Gospel then that’s okay. Keep teaching them such truths and one day the revelation will be enough for them to personally want to follow Jesus.

Some classes made shields to remind them how using God’s Word can help them overcome temptation. This emphasises the importance of the memory verse each week and the Bible stories we share. We are truly loving this journey with your children.

– The Children’s Church team

Children’s Church Reflection (22 May)

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One of the most powerful actions God displays to us, His children, is that He chooses to forgive us of our sins. God loves people so much that He chose to give His son Jesus to be a sacrifice to die for us so that our sins could be removed from us. If a righteous God was willing to forgive us of our sins, He commands that we should therefore forgive people when they wrong us.

This was the line in the Lord’s Prayer we focused on this week with our children: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

Our Part

The first point we wanted the children to grasp was the severity of sin. Sin is a real problem that has real consequences and should not be seen as something like “naughty fun”. Some of the Cornerstone sites attempted to make brownies using all of the right ingredients, except also added a little bit of cat food. The children were horrified. We suggested that just a little bit of cat food shouldn’t be a problem. They were adamant that cat food, no matter how little, would ruin the whole brownie batch. With that revelation we told them how sin is the same. Just a little sin ruins our lives, and whether it was a little sin or a lot of sin, sin is still sin and ruins us and requires forgiveness.

We also taught how Jesus taught the disciples to forgive all of the time. God constantly forgives us. We should learn to forgive repeatedly as well. We also focused on the story where a king was willing to forgive his servant for a large amount of money owed, but how the servant, although forgiven, refused to forgive a friend for a little amount of money owed (Matthew 18:21-35). There is such an important message in this: we need to learn to forgive and ask God to help us to forgive others, simply because we have been forgiven by Him despite our many wrongs.

Your Part

Speak to your children about the action of forgiveness. It is an action, not only a verbal practice. Learn to speak forgiveness but also show forgiveness by not reminding someone of their faults or constantly holding it against them. Imagine how sad life would be if God constantly reminded us of our faults and used them as a guilt trip against us. No, He forgives us and leads us to move on in life. Ask your children if they are carrying unforgiveness against someone. If yes then try to work it through with them to come to a place to forgive that person.

For you, mom and dad, it is important that you learn to show forgiveness. Children learn so much from their parents. If your children have done something wrong (which, being children, will happen quite frequently), after you have challenged them or disciplined them in some way, be quick to express that you have also forgiven them for what they did. Let your children see forgiveness and grace come from you first, especially against their wrongs. This will help them understand God’s grace and forgiveness and help them learn to show forgiveness to others too.

We would suggest that you do not make any brownies this week. Your children may question the ingredients you used and check the bin for cat food tins!

– The Children’s Church team