Description
Use this creative teaching idea to lead youth in a discussion on priorities and fulfilling the purpose in life for which God placed us in this world.

Materials

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

Preparation

1. 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.

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.

What to do

1. 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.
2. 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.)
3. 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 someone’s priority is to make lots of money they might stand in the possessions corner.)

Scripture Text
Read aloud Matthew 4:1-10

Discussion

• How does this passage relate to the posters in the corners of the room? Which poster represents each of the temptations?
• How did Christ’s understanding of his purpose in life reflect his priorities?
• What are some things that are part of God’s plan for every person’s life?
• How can you discover God’s plan for YOUR life?
• What do you believe is part of God’s 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 “God’s Purpose” for your life and away from the wrong priorities? What are some of the practical steps you can take that would move you closer to God’s ideal plan for your life?
• Commit to one of the steps you can start this week!

Take it to the Next Level
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.

Improving Your Teaching
This type of activity can be used for a variety of active learning lessons. Anytime there are choices to be made, or 2 or more facets of an issue, you can write these on posters and have kids move to that area of the room. The easiest is when there are two choices and youth are asked to move to the left or right of the room depending on whether they agree or disagree with a statement… or whether it is true of them or not. If there are lots of choices, just place them on the walls around the room. It gets the youth physically and mentally involved in the lesson by getting the kids out of their seats and thinking about where they personally stand in relation to a question or issue.

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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Game Description
This Easter egg toss can be used as a creative teaching idea to stimulate youth to discuss the empty tomb on Easter morning.

Game Materials

• Hard boiled eggs – Ideally you should have at least 1 hard boiled egg for every two youth.
• Egg cartons – put the eggs back into the cartons so that it looks like a carton of fresh eggs.

Game Preparation
Hard boil the eggs and place them back in the original egg cartons

Game Play

1. Take the youth outdoors to a parking lot or field with a lot of open space.
2. Form the youth into pairs and give each youth pair an egg. Do not tell them that it is hard boiled. They should believe that it is raw.
3. Form the youth into two lines with the pairs facing each other.
4. Ask youth to separate by a bit of a distance and toss the eggs to each other. Start close together and then after each toss, have the lines move a little further back from each other.
5. As the lines get farther apart take note of signs of nervousness and related comments as the stress levels increase.
6. Continue to separate the lines until several drop their eggs and the group begins to catch on to the fact that the eggs are not raw, but hard-boiled.
7. Bring the youth together for discussion. You might want to collect the unbroken eggs for a snack later.

Take it to the Next Level

• How did you feel as the lines became farther and farther apart?
• How did you feel when the egg ended up being not quite what you expected – when you discovered that the eggs were hard-boiled instead of raw?
• Why do you think eggs have become a symbol of Easter? In what ways is an egg like the tomb in which Jesus’ body was placed after the crucifixion? Eggs, like the empty tomb are sealed. Its not easy to place things inside or remove something.
• What feelings do you think the disciples experienced when Jesus body was placed in the tomb?
• How do you think those feelings changed when they discovered the tomb was not quite like they expected — it was EMPTY!
• Does God often do the unexpected? The seemingly impossible? Why?

Closing Application
Jesus told the disciples on several occasions that he would be resurrected back to life and return to them, but the disciples did not understand. It seemed impossible so they had a hard time believing. So on Easter morning, their first thoughts at find the tomb empty were that someone might have stolen the body. Their emotions were turned upside down as grief turned to joy, worry turned to relief. God has many surprises in store for his followers. He can turn our stress into joy and replace our worries with gladness and relief if we will trust him with our future! After all, if he can conquer death, then nothing is impossible for God!

Easter Collection

Get more than 80 creative ideas for planning a Youth Easter celebration or Easter Party. You can immediately download my best Easter Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Easter activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!

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Introduction
The Focus of Luke 15 is God’s love for the lost and the extend that he will go to get them back into his loving care!

Game Description
You can use a variety of scavenger hunt types of games to serve as an introduction to the three stories in Luke: Parable of the Lost Sheep, Parable of the Lost Coin, and Parable of the Lost Son. Here’s a few ideas:

• Hide a special colored Jelly bean among a bowl of Jelly Beans.
  1. Get a large bag of Jelly beans for each team.
  2. Remove all of a single color so that only one jelly bean of that color remains.
  3. Pour the Jelly Beans in a bowl.
  4. Each team must choose one representative to search through the bowl and obtain the jelly bean.
  5. But here’s the twist. They cannot use their hands and they must grab the Jelly bean with their teeth!
  6. The first team representative to show you the correct colored jelly bean, grasped in their teeth wins!
  7. To include more team members in the game, after the first team representative correctly obtains the right jelly bean, add one jelly bean of the correct color for the next team member. Continue until EVERY member of the team has correctly obtained a Jelly Bean.
  8. This also works great with Jelly Bean Salvation to present a gospel message. In that case, remove all the RED Jelly beans except one. Then use the other colors of the jelly beans to present the Gospel – Black, Red, White, Green, etc. It’s also a great game for Easter!
• Hide a strawberry inside a pie tin filled with whip cream.
  This plays the same way as the Jelly Bean version, but is a messy variation! Be sure to have some wet towels to clean up the whip cream covered faces!
• Hide a Jelly bean or hard candy in a pie tin filled with flour
  Again, a messy variation of the Jelly Bean option.
• Hide Strawberries in some red colored Jello
  In this variation, players must plant their face in the Jello and try to come up with a strawberry in their teeth.
• Hide a silver coin among a large number of pennies
  In this variation, youth / kids have to search through a bucket of pennies to find the single silver coin. It has the advantage of being closer related to the Parable of the Lost coin. To make it more difficult, make the team members wear a pair of thick gloves or blindfold them.
• Hide a dried green pea among a bowl of dried beans.
  In this variation, dried beans are used instead of candy. To make it more difficult, give team members straws. Youth must use suction through the straw to fish the pea out of the bowl and drop it into another bowl across the room. Replace the pea after each team member is successful.
• Hide a small plastic sheep amid a box of animal crackers.
  This variation has the advantage of relating more closely to the parable of the sheep. If you can’t find a sheep, add a little hardened white frosting to one of the animal crackers that most closely resembles a sheep. To make it more difficult, blindfold each team member first.
• Hide a special colored marble among a bag of various colored marbles.
  Use colored marbles to replace the jelly beans. To make it more difficult, add thick gloves to make it more difficult or try using a straw to pick up the marble like the green pea variation. You can also use a blindfold. You can use the colored marbles in the same way as Jelly Bean Salvation, to present the gospel.
• Find the prize in a box of cereal.
  Get a box of dried cereal and have kids search through the box to find the prize. Cracker Jack boxes with prizes inside also work well. First person to find his prize wins.

Take it to the Next Level

• What was difficult about finding the lost item?
• What were some of the frustrations? How did you feel trying to find one little item among so many?
• Have you ever been lost? How did you feel?
• In what ways are people lost?
• Why do you think God values us so much and finds us to precious to search for us among so many others?
• Why do you think you are so precious to God?
• Do you feel God loves you in the same way? Why or why not?
• If God is so determined to find us and bring us back into his loving care, how should we feel toward God?
• How should we feel about helping others find their way back to God? (Evangelism)
• Have you become spiritually lost? In what ways do you think God has been searching for you?

Take Action
How can you respond to God’s love for you?

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.

Learn More…

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states, “Tell me and I will forget, Show me and I may remember, Involve me and I will understand.” Too often our lessons with youth focus on “Show and Tell” and not necessarily in that order. Unfortunately, far too many youth lessons focus on just “Tell.” Get youth physically involved or you risk them disengaging after awhile due to the lack of movement. Youth need opportunities to release a little of that pent up energy. They need to be involved to get the most understanding from the lesson. Just make sure you keep them focused rather than distract them. What they do needs to explicitly link to what you want to tell the youth.

Object Lessons
The next time you do an “Object Lesson” get the youth to interact with the object in some way. Play a game with it. Get youth to pass it around. Get youth to model it. Get youth to wear it. And then link what the youth do with the object into your object lesson in some way inviting them INTO the lesson.

Stories
Youth love stories. Actually, everyone loves stories. And one of the greatest teaching techniques is to “Tell” a story so that people will remember the point. But the next time you tell a story to youth, get the youth personally involved in some way. Assign some of the youth parts to act as you tell the story. Assign some of the youth to make specific sound effects when certain cues are given in your story. Assign certain actions or facial expressions for youth to do when specific key words or other cues are given in the story. Decorate the youth room so that a similar environment is created as in the story you want to tell. Instead of saying “Imagine if we were all standing in a circle……”, get them into a circle. Ask youth to create a modern version of a familiar story and to act it out as the tell it. Next time you use a story, don’t just get them on the edge of their seats, get them out of their seats, inviting them INTO the story!

The next time you teach youth, if you are doing a lot of show and tell, think about ways you can involve your youth so the information will resonate and stick. Get them out of their seats!

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.
Learn More…

Description of Christmas Teaching Idea
Youth will search famous Christian hymns for clues to the real meaning of Christmas!

Resources

• Hymn books or the words to famous Christmas Hymns
• Large sheet of paper for each group. (classifieds from the newspaper are a cheap alternative) (Group size can be pairs or small groups of any number)
• One water soluble marker for each group
• Adhesive tape

Preparation

1. Arrange the chairs so that youth will sit in small groups when they enter the room.
2. Inside each circle of chairs place one or more hymn books and a large sheet of paper.
3. Tape a list of page numbers for the hymns under one chair in each group to help them quickly locate the Christmas Hymns.
4. The person with this list is designated the group leader.
5. Tape a water soluble marker under one chair. The person sitting in this chair will be responsible for writing the list of observations.

What to Do

1. Once the youth are seated, have them look under the chair for the list and the marker. Assign each task accordingly.
2. Each group is given a task to search through the Christmas Hymns and identify what they teach us about Christmas. They should identify the song title and the phrase for each response.
3. They should search the stanzas and the hymn titles and write what they find on the piece of paper given.
4. When you are ready, stop the activity.
5. Ask the team leaders to present their lists to the class as a whole.

Take it to the Next Level

• Here are some of the questions you can ask. Each group can be assigned the same question, or each group may have a different one.
• Who are the key people discussed in each hymn?
• What are the key events mentioned in each hymn?
• What references to scripture can be found in the hymns?
• What facts about Jesus’ birth are referenced?
• What phrases are used to describe the baby Jesus?
• What things are mentioned that are based upon tradition instead of Scripture?
• What response do these hymns require from us related to Christmas? Do they ask us to do anything?
• What emotions are suggested or expressed?
• Why do you think this hymn was written?
• Why do you think this this hymn has become popular for the Christmas season?

Variation

• Instead of splitting up the questions, ask each group the same list of questions, but give each group a different hymn.

Christmas Collection

Get more than 200 creative ideas for planning a Youth Christmas celebration or Christmas Party party. You can immediately download my best Christmas Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Christmas activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!

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The phrase “Give Thanks to the Lord” is found throughout the scriptures.

In Psalms the phrase “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever” is found in numerous verses…. (see Psalm 106:1,7; 107:1; 118:1,29; 136:1; 1 Chronicles 16:34)

We usually thank others for things they do, but God is worthy of thanks because of His Character: He is Good, He is loving. He is also righteousness (Psalm 7:17)

What are some of the qualities of God that you might give thanks for?

“Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men,” (Psalm 107:8, 15, 21, 31)
Many verses command us to give thanks to God for the good things he has done. (1 Chronicles 16:8, Psalm 105:1, Psalm 118:21). But is not just for the good things as we must give thanks in ALL things. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

What are some of the things that God has done in your life that motivate you to a heart of thanksgiving?

That thanks takes not only the form of words, but also song. (Psalm 28:7; Psalm 100:4; Psalm 7:17)

What are some of the ways that we can reveal our thanks to God?

Other verses on thanks include:
1 Chronicles 29:13
Psalm 30:12
Psalm 35:18
Psalm 118:28
Psalm 119:62

So this Thanksgiving and EVERY Day, GIVE GOD THANKS!

Holiday Collection

Creative Holiday Ideas has over 300 pages of ideas to help you plan your next New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween or Fall Festival, and Thanksgiving event. If you’ve ever wondered what you’re going to do for all these holidays and how you’re going to do it, this resource is for you.

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