Gather
Activities and prayers to gather the group and introduce the theme
Use the Jump menu on the right to find Prayers and other resources.
A pen and paper exercise
Thinking about the choices we make in our lives.
- Ask people to think about choices they have made this week. These could be simple choices (e.g. what to eat) or something more difficult (e.g. how to deal with a difficult situation at work/school).
- Alternatively, prepare a large selection of images – people, animals, scenes, anything at all – and ask people to choose one image.
- Invite people to share their choices, saying whether it was hard or easy, and what guided or influenced their choices. Is it the choice itself that was easy/hard, or explaining why you made it?
- In today’s worship, we are going to think about choosing who we look to and follow when we make difficult choices in life. We will think about a choice Jesus presented to the disciples: to choose darkness or light.
First impressions
You could also use the image and following questions to help introduce the theme.
- How does looking up at the light through the trees make you feel?
- How might ‘the light’ speak to us of something eternal?
- How can we show that we live in the light rather than the darkness?