Today on the podcast, Sean shares about a recent lesson idea he used in Elevate called Sleuth It Up.
As part of an ongoing preteen series called 30 Pictures of Jesus, Sean’s preteen group is taking a look through the book of Luke at various pictures of who Jesus is. Part of this journey was a lesson called Sleuth It Up. The students were invited to come dressed as detectives or spies.
During Preservice time, there was a mystery needing to be unraveled.
After the service started, preteens played a visual mysteries game with two buzzers.
Then the message began with Sean asking the question: what are detectives searching for? (EVIDENCE)
The Small Groups were given gallon size plastic Ziploc bags with an “Evidence” sticker on each bag and given 8 minutes to search for evidence that points to the existence of God and place in the bags.
After the “Evidence” hunt they transitioned into the story of John who was looking for evidence to prove Jesus was who he said he was. John was in jail and couldn’t see what Jesus was doing and was suffering which caused doubt in his mind that Jesus truly was who he said he was. John sends his own “detectives” to ask Jesus, “Are you the one or should we be expecting someone else?” In Luke it states that Jesus performed many miracles and then told the “detectives” to bring the evidence back to John.
The story led to a discussion about faith.
As a visual illustration Sean brought up a student and had him stand on the edge of the stage. He asked the student if he trusted him enough to catch him if he fell backwards off the stage. The student was only a 9 on a scale of 1-10 but he acted as a 10 and fell backwards and Sean caught him. After some more discussion about their faith in God, the groups were allowed to send one person up to share one piece of evidence they had found earlier.
As they left every student received a sandwich size bag with “Evidence” stickers to take home with them and continue their search for evidence that points to the existence of God.
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