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Creative Teaching Ideas

A New Year: New Priorities

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A New Year - New Priorities
With the New Year we typically evaluate the past year and set new priorities for the upcoming year. Sometimes we call these new priorities or renewed priorities New Year’s Resolutions. New Year’s Resolutions may be focused around family, personal goals, money, jobs, and many other things. While these things are not necessarily wrong, when they take precedence over our relationship with God they become a problem.

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What You Need

  1. Large sheets of paper or newsprint
  2. Whiteboard markers (that will not bleed through the paper)

Preparation

  1. Put a Poster or large sheet of paper in each corner of the room for each of the following labels:
    • Possessions or Provision
    • Power or Position
    • Popularity
    • Others
  2. Place a chair in the exact center of the room as a marker.

What to Do

  1. Explain:
    • Possessions refer to the material things we seek in life.
    • Power refers to positions we want to obtain in life.
    • Popularity refers to social recognition and fame that people seek in life.
    • Explain that the center of the room represents living for God.
  2. Allow youth to brainstorm about the things that people have as priorities in their lives. Examples might be good grades, a good job, a marriage partner, a house, to serve God, to have lots of money, etc.
  3. Then have youth write the priority on the poster that represents that priority. Some items might fit into more than one category (i.e. good grades might be a priority but the reason could be for popularity or for the purpose of getting a job with more money and a higher position – power.)
  4. After the posters have been filled with examples of each priority, have youth stand somewhere in the room that reflects their most important priorities in life. (For example, if someones priority is to make lots of money they might stand in the possessions corner.)

TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

MAKE IT SPIRITUAL

Read Matthew 4:1-10

  • How does this passage relate to the posters in the corners of the room?
  • Which poster represents each of the temptations?
  • How did Christs understanding of his purpose in life reflect his priorities?

Jesus was tempted with popularity, power, and possessions (material needs). But because Jesus understood his purpose in the world he did not give into temptation. There is nothing wrong with material possessions, power or popularity. But when they replace God as a priority in our lives they become a problem. In fact, later in Jesus ministry we would see him providing for the physical needs of people, he would demonstrate the power of God, and he would be popular. Yet his priority was to do the will of God, to accomplish the purpose for which he had been sent into the world. God has brought each of us into the world for a purpose. The better we understand our purpose, the better we will be able to balance our priorities to fulfill that purpose in the new year.

MAKE IT PRACTICAL

  • What are some things that are part of Gods plan for every persons life?
  • How can a person discover and trust Gods plan for his or her life? (See Proverbs 3:5-6; Philippians 4:6; Romans 8:28)

MAKE IT PERSONAL

  • What do you believe is part of Gods purpose for bringing YOU into the world? (You may not know all the details yet, but you might have some ideas.)
  • Each of you has positioned yourself in a specific corner of the room based on your own priorities. How can someone in your position move closer to Gods Purpose for your life and away from the wrong priorities?
  • What are some of the practical steps you can take this year that would move you closer to Gods ideal plan for your life?
  • Commit to one of the steps you can start this week!

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ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES
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Proverbs 3:5-6
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will direct your paths.”

Philippians 4:6
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Romans 8:28
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

1 Thessalonians 5:18
“in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 3:8
“What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.”

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Game Ideas, Object Lessons

Broken Water Balloons

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Broken Water Balloons

You can’t have summer without at least one water balloon fight. Water Balloons have a purpose – to be filled with water. As God’s creation each of us also has a purpose. Pascal said that all men were created with a God shaped vacuum – an emptiness in our lives only GOD can fill. When we try to fill that emptiness with things other than the Living Water, we will always feel empty. We will always be thirsty.

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Games Using Water Balloons

  • Back to Back – Split the youth up into partners however many as necessary. Then put them next to a bucket of water balloons. This is a relay race so have another bucket abouy 15 feet away. The players have to put the water balloon between both of their backs and walk to the other bucket. If your balloon breaks you must go back and get another balloon. Set a time limit and when the times run out see which team has the most water balloons in their bucket.
  • Beach Towel Toss – Divide into teams of two, each person holding a towel at the corners. Standing six feet apart, each team must use the towel to toss a balloon back and forth with another team. After a successful toss, have the teams move farther apart. Continue playing until the balloon breaks.
  • Blanket Water Balloon Toss – All youth stand around a blanket holding an edge. When you toss individual water balloons high into the air, the youth must try to catch each water balloon in the blanket.
  • Hot Potato, Water Balloon Style – Played just like Hot Potato, youth must pass a water balloon around the circle when the music starts. When it stops whoever is holding it has the bust the water balloon on their own head.
  • Soaker – one person throws a water balloon high in the air and calls out another player’s name or number. The player so called must catch the balloon. If the player succeeds at catching it unbroken, she gets a free shot at the thrower who called her name and gets her turn at throwing a water balloon up and calling another’s name.
  • Water Balloon Pinata – Fill regular sized round balloons up with water, and tie them to a rope that is hung between two trees. You are blindfolded, given a plastic baseball bat, and get three swings to break a balloon.
  • Water Balloon Shot Put – see who can toss a water balloon the farthest. For added incentive, have a leader stand just out of reach of the players for a target.
  • Water Balloon Squat – Relay. Run to the line. Sit on a water balloon. Return to the team.
  • Water Balloon Stuff – Get two sets of those long johns and a bunch of water balloons. Get two volunteers and assign them a team whose job is to stuff water balloons in the long johns. When the designated time is up you count the balloons and the one with the most balloons wins. The winner and his stuffers get to throw all the balloons at the loser.
  • Water Balloon Toss – Form two lines of paired players, facing each other. Have each pair toss a water balloon back and forth, taking a step backwards after every two tosses. The further back you step, the further the toss and the more likely the water balloon will burst. The last pair to have their water balloon intact wins.
  • Water Balloon Toss Relay – Form 2 or more even teams. As in any relay race, have a starting line and a finishing line. Spread each member of the team about 3-5 feet apart. Each member must toss the water balloon to the next team member. If the water balloon breaks or falls onto the floor they have to start from the very beginning. The object of the game is to send 3 water balloon successfully down the line and into their team bucket.
  • Water balloon volleyball – Set up a volleyball net or string a rope between two posts, and then split the youth into groups of two. Give each group a towel or sheet and instruct the teams to hold it between them to create a landing mat for water balloons. With one team on each side of the net, the players use their towel or sheet to toss the balloon over the net to the other side. Every time a team drops a balloon, the balloon breaks or the balloon doesn’t cross over the net, the opposite team earns a point. Play to eight points before switching out teams.
  • WATER BALLOON FIGHT – have a classic water Balloon war between two teams.

TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

At the end of your water balloon games, take a hose and squirt a leader or volunteer down.

  • Compare a water balloon and a hose? In what what ways are they similar? Different?
  • Describe a time when you were really thirsty?

MAKE IT SPIRITUAL

During the time of Jeremiah much of Israel had turned away from God. They had turned away from the Fountain of living water and were looking to other things (broken cisterns) to satisfy their spiritual thirst. A cistern was basically just a hole in the ground with some kind of lining meant to hold stagnant rainwater. They were broken from the very day they were built. Only God Himself can quench our spiritual thirst. (See Isaiah 55:1-2, John 4:10-14, John 6:35 and John 7:37-38.) Imagine yourself as a very thirsty person in a parched land, turning away from a bubbling spring of cool water to shovel out a cistern in the dirt, under the parched sun, in the hopes of collecting some rain water! Many people today are also busy digging cisterns. We are not so different from the people of Jeremiah’s day. The one thing that is different is that we have more things available to us with which we try to satisfy the deep longings and thirsts of our lives.

  • Discuss as a group how cisterns were constructed and the constant effort it took to maintain them vs. get refreshed from a natural spring of water.
  • Digging cisterns is like going our own way in life. How do our own plans take constant effort to maintain?
  • What are some of the things people seek for pleasure, happiness, to fill the emptiness of our days?
  • Why do people insist on building broken cisterns rather than drinking from the spring of living water that will never run dry?
  • Why do people look for other sources? Why aren’t people happy with the Living Water?
  • Why do we run from one thing to another, never finding satisfaction, but never running to God?

MAKE IT PRACTICAL

  • How do we know if we are seeking the things of God or broken cisterns?
  • What is it in us that makes us prefer to do things our way rather than accept God’s way?
  • Is it possible for us to be so busy doing things that don’t really matter that you never became involved in the things of God? Can we do good things and yet still neglect God? Spiritual things?

MAKE IT PERSONAL

  • Describe a time when you sought God to fill a void in your life that seemed impossible to face?
  • What do I not have in my life that, if I only had, I believe would make me happy?
  • What do I now have, that, if taken away, would leave me unhappy or devastated?
  • What do I have now that I spend a lot of time maintaining and would struggle to keep?
  • What is it that I now have in my life that I can’t live without?
  • Are you so busy repairing and refilling your broken cistern that you never took advantage of the fountain of life God offers?
  • God is asking you to see what you have been doing with your life. How are you spending your time, your money, your abilities, your resources?
  • Are you wasting your life and ignoring the many opportunities to be used by God?
  • Where are you going to drink today, this week this month, the rest of your life—for all of eternity? The spring of living waters or the cisterns of this world?
  • Ask God to show you the broken cisterns you have in your life. Surrender them and ask Him to satisfy your soul with Himself alone.
  • What are you consuming that masks your inner thirst? What deeper needs do you sense in yourself? Ask God would to show you how He can meet that need.

SCRIPTURE

  • Jeremiah 2:13 – “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
  • John 7:37 – “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink”
  • John 10:10 – He said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”

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Object Lessons

Setting Priorities for the New Year

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The beginning of the year is often the time when people set new goals and priorities for the year ahead. This lesson is adapted from an object lesson on priorities in our Creative Object Lessons ebook.

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You can find this as an illustration here.

An Object Lesson

What You Need

  • Marker than can write on plastic
  • Transparent plastic or glass jar
  • Ping pong balls (or golf balls)
  • Bag of rice
  • Two small plastic bags – You can use more but I prefer two.
  • Large sheet of paper, newspaper classified ads, or whiteboard

Advance Preparation

  1. Place as many ping pong balls in the jar as will fit
  2. Add as much rise as possible to fill the rest of the space
  3. Empty the jar and place the rice into the plastic bags
  4. Discard the ping balls that were not in the jar so that you only have those that fit.

What to Do

  1. Ask the youth to list goals people might have for this new year?
  2. List them on the newsprint or whiteboard so that all can see.
  3. Pass out the ping pong balls and ask the students to write one of the goals for the new year on each Ping Pong Ball
  4. Ask the students to choose three other things to write on the bags of rice.
  5. Pour the bags of rice into the jar, reading each goals as you pour its contents into the jar.
  6. Then do the same with each of the ping pong balls. These will not all fit.
  7. Explain that if you do the small things first, you won’t have time for the important things.
  8. Ask youth to decide which things on the ping pong balls are the most important and place them in the jar first. You might need to replace the labels on some of them or replace them with the leftover ping pong balls.
  9. Then when you put the items for the rice in they will all fall into place and everything will fit.

TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

MAKE IT SPIRITUAL

When it comes to setting goals, I sometimes hear two different opinions. I’ve heard people say we should not plan but should be led by the spirit in everything we do. I’ve heard others say that God gave us brains and wisdom to plan in advance and we must make concrete plans. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. We must make plans and be wise with our time, but at the same time our plans must not be so fixed that there is no room for God to add, change, or interrupt those plans for his will to be done.

1. Men of God make plans based upon the wisdom they have

  • Proverbs 6 affirms wise planning and working toward those plans.
  • Proverbs 13:16 “A wise man thinks ahead; a fool doesn’t and even brags about it!”
  • Proverbs 15:22 “Plans go wrong with too few counselors; many counselors bring success.”
  • Proverbs 21:5 “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.”
  • Paul made plans (see Acts 15:36; Rom 1:13)
  • The disciples made plans (Acts 6:1-3)
  • Jesus made plans (Matt 10:5-15; 16:21; 26:17-19)
  • Jesus used plans as an illustration in his teachings (Luke 14:28-31)

2. God’s Word must be a guide for our plans (Psalm 119:9-16; Matthew 4:4; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; Matthew 6:33-34)

3. Our plans must be sensitive and allow room for God to change those plans. (See Acts 16:6-7) James 4:13-14 reminds us that our plans are secondary to God’s. “Instead, you ought to to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that'” (v. 15). Proverbs 16:9, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.”

MAKE IT PRACTICAL

Ultimately, God has one primary goal for each of our lives – to become more like Christ – Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Galatians 4:19; Ephesians 4:13; 22-24

  • What are some of the goals we should have as Christians in this regard.
  • What goals can we set that will help us to become more and more Christlike?

MAKE IT PERSONAL

  • What are some of your personal goals?
  • If you accomplish each goal, how will Jesus Christ be glorified?
  • How does each goal help you and/or others become more like Jesus Christ?

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES

Matthew 6:33

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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Object Lessons

Easter Treasure

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One of the most common Easter activities is the easter Egg Hunt. This creative youth idea isn’t a treasure hunt, but an object lesson related to our pursuit of earthly treasures. Sometimes in the quest to grab all the things we want in life, we fail to remember that when we seek him first, all things will be added unto us.

Resources

  • A large number of coins, preferrable of the same denomination.
  • An opaque Jumbo-sized plastic Easter egg with the letters God written on it but stretched around the egg so that they don’t easily notice it unless it is pointed out to them.
  • A $20 bill placed inside the large plastic egg.
  • A stopwatch

NOTE: This game can also be played as a competition between two teams. Just double up the number of coins and add a second Jumbo-sized Easter egg with the $20 note inside.

What to Do

  1. Ask for a youth to volunteer to play the game.
  2. Scatter the coins across the top of the table.
  3. Tell the volunteer, or if you are doing this as a competition, the team repesentatives that they can keep all the money they are holding until the time ends. But there is a condition they must agree to before they can play the game.
  4. Explain the condition: They can only use ONE hand (Youth can choose to use their left or right hand but not both) All coins must be kept in the hand they start with and they cannot lay down any coins for any reason.
  5. Get the youth to agree to the condition and then add another catch. Since it is near to Easter, they must pick up the coins while holding a plastic Easter egg in in the same hand used to pick up the coins. If anyone asks about the plastic egg, just tell them it is to make it more of a challenge.
  6. Yell out “Go” and start the stopwatch. Don’t worry about the time, but as soon as the egg is dropped by all participants, call time.
  7. Reveal that the word “God” is written on the plastic then open it to reveal the $20 bill.
  8. Of course if they had just held on to God, they would have received more than the small coins collected from the table.

Take It to the Next Level

 

Make it Spiritual

  • Ask the youth what made the game difficult?
  • How is this game similar to life?
  • What are some of the things we try to grab and hold on to in life?
  • How does our pursuit and holding on to these things affect our relationship with God?
  • What are the consequences? What do we miss out on?
  • How does this relate to the words of Jesus “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34)

Make it Practical

Of course, most of the time we don’t consciously let our relationship with God drop. We simply fill our lives with too many other things. Sometimes we are trying to pursue things never realising that he has already promised them to us and they already belong to us.

  • What are some of the things that God promises us?
  • What are some things you have allowed to drop in your spiritual life? Why?
  • How can a person be focused on Christ?

Make it Personal

  • Where is your treasure? What are your treasures?
  • What are some of the things that crowd out Christ in your daily life? How can you make God more a priority?
  • If Jesus told you, “One thing you lack” (like he told the rich young ruler in Luke 18), what would he say to you?

Scripture References

Matthew 6:33 [See Matthew 6:19-34]
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Luke 12:33-34
“Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Haggai 1:9
“You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house.

Luke 18:24-25
“Jesus looked at him and said, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.'”

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