Skip to main content

Making the Word Come Alive

By

Goal for the Children, for the Teenagers, for the Adults of the João Pessoa Congregation:

Study ONE chapter of the Bible each week.

    Since we made this goal in September 2009, we have studied Esther, James, Jonah, Philippians, and now Ruth. After studying a couple of books, we have a congregation wide competition. The last was the James/Jonah Cup with thirty participants.

And the winners were...

Group A: (6-8 yr old) Mathias Hagewood (1st - 56%), 
Lucas McKinney (2nd - 47%)

Group B: (9-12 yr old) Nicholas Newlin (1st - 83%), 
Mariana Campos (2nd - 72%)

Group C: (13 yr to adult) Kamilla Crispim (1st - 90%), 
Vinicios Soares (2nd - 79%)

Group D: (missionary couples) Monica Newlin (1st - 95%), 
Jeremy Newlin (2nd - 89%)

LOCK-IN
    To make the Word more alive, we had a lock-in for the pre-adolescent group on the theme of the "Christian Journey and the Book of Jonah". We divided up the auditorium into sections and the kids journeyed from one place to the next:

The first section was BIBLE READING: we read the whole book of Jonah.

PRAYER: We wrote out prayers at if we were in crisis, like Jonah, needing God. Some of the kid's prayers were touching.

MEDITATION: the kids were introduced to this much neglected Christian discipline, as we meditated on God's greatness.

BIBLE STUDY: They answered questions, having to search the Bible for the answers. All this went on from 7 to 10 pm and then we came to the hardest:

FASTING: We sat around a table full of potato chips, cookies, and cokes, and no one was allowed to touch them. These ten year olds had never been denied food in their lives and couldn't believe they weren't going to eat. Here's a picture of them dying of hunger, begging for food, crawling toward the potato chips:

I found out later that several hadn't had supper.

Then came EVANGELISM: they had to share Jesus, talking about Him to a visitor.

PERSECUTION: When people share Christ, the enemy gets mad and stirs up trouble. They got raw eggs mixed with corn meal thrown at them. Samuel thought they were throwing food and got a mouthful of egg, yuck!

BENEVOLENCE: David McKinney, dressed as a poor beggar, came and collected their money. A couple of kids even gave their bus fare home and worried the rest of the night how they were going to get home.

SINGING: while we sang about Christ coming back someday, David McKinney (again) came with a flash of light around midnight, dressed as Jesus, saying, "I was hungry and you fed me, welcome, my children, to Heaven, and you know what's the best thing about heaven? We have FOOD!" Then the kids tackled Jesus and went through the chips as if they had been in the belly of a fish for three days.



After all the excitement, we had a hard time getting them to sleep.

We'll do anything to get our young people excited about the most exciting Book on the face of the earth.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two Weeks of VBS!

By
          You might think that one week of 60 screaming, starving for attention kids is more than enough for the year, but no, here is João Pessoa we doubled the fun, doing a repeat of VBS back to back: four more days with the Mangabeira congregation. inviting the children who go to the school where the church meets.           VBS is indeed a lot of fun, but a lot of work, the kids, though, who love it and who start getting a taste for God’s word for the first time make it worth it. Acting out the story of Joseph in Eygpt, teaching how God cares for us and blesses us, resurrecting King TUT (Jeremy Newlin) and the Mummy in skits that teaching these truths, are all part of creating an experience that boys and girls will remember for years.           Lori Hagewood did an excellent job organizing this ministry, and we thank the Joelton church of Christ for ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Missions In May

By
     I will be traveling this weekend to Cajazeiras to teach an intensive seminar on "Faith and Obedience"over the weekend.  Please pray for a safe trip and encouraging, edifying classes.  The church in this city has a lot of young people.  Most of whom have not grown up around Christian influences.  In fact, many of them have seen more drug dealers than people imitating Christ.  Helping them understand God's Word and the promises in which their faith is rooted is important for them, as well as any Christian.  Helping them understand how that faith will be evident in their lives through words, actions and attitudes will be important for all of those around them.       On May 13th , Joe McKinney and I will head out for Patos, returning on May 16th .  Our goal is to discover church's needs and how to best help them.  We will als...
Post a Comment
Read more

Unity Through The Word

By
          Thank you all for your prayers for the PORMISSOES meeting last month.  It was a great blessing.  We sat and studied God's Word together for the entire day.  There were some differences of understanding on some passages, but we worked our way through them.  In the end, everyone was saying how the meeting was edifying.            It started around 9:30 am.  We broke for lunch at 1 pm.  We started back around 2:30 and went until 6 pm.  They wanted to keep going, but the SEARA class started at 7 pm.  If every meeting could be as encouraging as this one, we would be in heaven.           My goal with these meetings is to teach the church workers throughout the state how to listen to someone who has a different belief about God's Word, try to understand their logic, their thought process...
Post a Comment
Read more