Respond to the Word

For children

Welcome

Decorate biscuits or cakes using icing pens or, if you have time, making the icing themselves. Alternatively, the children could make jam sandwiches cut into different shapes using biscuit cutters. (Younger children may need help with this.) Talk about the kind of food that we offer to people who visit us. At the end of the session, some of the sandwiches, cakes or biscuits could be shared by the children, offered to the congregation, or taken home for family or neighbours.

God’s here

Give each child a sheet of paper, and ask them to draw a picture of someone else in the room. Try to ensure that everyone is drawn. The name of the person they are drawing must be kept secret! (You may find this is hard for very young children; if possible, let them whisper the name to you, and then help them with their drawing.) Display the finished pictures so that everyone can see them. Invite the children to work together to show how God is present with everyone. This could be by drawing a large circle around the pictures, a large pair of hands cupped around the images or by adding labels saying ‘God is with me’ to each image.

Welcoming God

As a group, plan a celebration for the start of the summer holidays or end of the school year. Whom would they invite? What kind of food would they want to prepare? Where would they hold the celebrations? How would they entertain their guests? How would they recognise God in their celebrations? Write their ideas on a large sheet of paper, and display. Ask some children to write and/or decorate menus, and others to write invitations or make decorations. (The younger children could make paper chains, for example.) Add everyone’s contributions to the display. If possible, use the ideas for a real celebration during the summer.

A grand day too

Look at the list of things the children came up with in A grand day in Gathering activities . Did they include everything in their Welcoming God preparation? Ask them to reflect on what they might have left out. Can they include anything now to make sure people feel welcome, just as Abraham did in the story?

Seeing God

Ask the children individually to design a football strip for a church or neighbourhood football team. Talk about the need for individual designs so that teams can be recognised and supporters can recognise each other. You could give the children templates of a plain shirt to fill in or let them draw their own. The children can write the name of the team at the bottom. Add the following: ‘Shirts help us to recognise our football team; people help us to recognise God.’

For young people

Never!

Using a toy or mobile phone, invite members of the group to act out the most surprising and unexpected thing someone could tell them over the phone. What one phrase, if they heard it when they answered their mobile, would change their entire lives?

So important

Invite one person to pretend to be a VIP. Ask the others to come up and, one by one, mime how they would greet this VIP. Give out prizes for the most over-the-top and unexpected greeting they produce!

Imagine

Provide art materials and paper. Give the young people time and space to reflect on the first verses of this passage and produce some art in response to what they read and how they imagine the scene.

Model meal part two

Invite the group to plan a menu for a meal for very special guests. The meal should be balanced and provide for those with different requirements. Challenge the group to plan an appropriate menu that might show someone is truly welcome. Once the menu is planned, explain that they will then need to plan the process of preparing the meal, what should be done, when. You could take this to the end point and invite a guest or guests to join your group on a future occasion and the group should prepare the planned meal. If you have access to cooking facilities this could be a hot meal. If not, it should be something that could be served cold or brought hot in heated trays or flasks.