Adult & All Age
God, we gather as your people.
God, we gather as your people.
We come to walk a journey together,
to talk and to share along the way,
[to feast on bread and wine],
to meet and to know Jesus.
Help us to marvel at all that Jesus has done for us. Amen.
A way to begin worship when all ages are present.
Who is it?
Prepare some pictures of a number of animals from the Lion King story.
Also prepare some small cards with clues about each item (e.g. Zazu the officious bird: says a lot; gets into trouble; is blue; has feathers; is a red-billed hornbill). Information is readily available online to do this.
Ask volunteers to hold up the pictures. Ask if anyone knows what or who each image is. Try to identify them by name (e.g. Simba the lion, Zazu the bird). Help the guessing along by using the descriptions you have prepared – one clue at a time. Try some clues before you show the picture.
Ask if people knew all the interesting facts about each image, commenting that you have discovered so much in preparing for today. It’s amazing how much more we can find out, not just about Disney characters, but about all sorts of things and people when we dig a bit deeper, or when we listen to people telling their story. Let’s see what or who we find out about today.
Children & Young People
Jesus of Nazareth,
we all come with our own stories to tell,
we’ve all made different journeys here,
but we all come to hear your story
and to understand how our stories and journeys fit with yours.
Walk and talk with us, Lord Jesus. Amen.
A quiet way to begin your session.
Ask for a volunteer among the children to be blindfolded.
Ask them to recognise somebody in the room by asking that person (ideally a leader) to share a story from their life.
How easy was it to recognise the person sharing their story?
In the story today, there are people who meet Jesus, see and hear him, but still don’t recognise who he is.
An active way to begin your session.
Ask the children to sit in a circle and explain that you are going to tell a story together, but each person is only allowed to say three words before the storytelling is taken over by the next person.
Choose someone to start and move around the circle until everyone has had a turn.