Before you start: 

Meeting aim: To realise that we belong to God: we are God’s chosen people. To explore: what does it mean to belong to God and also a community of believers?

Background information:

Lots of preparation required for this one:

• Prepare some recordings of celebrities’ voices.

• Have plenty of scarves for blindfolds.

• Have some whistles (in case people can't whistle themselves).

• Get a short clip of a dog show / contest – www.youtube.com

• Obtain a copy of Mariah Carey's song ‘We Belong Together’ and consider creating a PowerPoint presentation or some images around today's passage.

• Find the Carling advert called ‘Belong’

• Get hold of a copy of the film Never Been Kissed.

• Print the Carling ‘Belong’ logo onto squares of card (1 per person).

• Have plenty of prizes for the games!

Celebrity voice (10 mins) 

Prepare some short recordings of some famous people / celebrities speaking or singing - you may also like to include some more locally ‘famous’ people such as leaders in the church and some members of the youth group! Play a short take of each (a couple of seconds or 1-3 words will be plenty) and have the group guess who the voice belongs to. For larger groups you could do this in small groups. Have a prize for the winner/s.

Shepherd and his sheep (20 mins)  

Get the young people into small teams of about six. One person from each group is nominated as the shepherd. The remaining group members are now sheep and must not talk. They are now in their shepherd’s control. Create a small sheep pen per group using chairs or scarves on the floor, leaving a small opening to the pen. The shepherd must try and get all his sheep into their pen without using any words. His only form of communication is whistling. To add further difficulty the sheep must all be blindfolded so that they truly rely on the shepherd’s instructions.

Each team can have a few minutes to work out how they will achieve the task and to come up with a whistle language! Play some music whilst they do this so that the groups do not hear the other groups ideas. Have prizes for the group that completes the task first.

A man’s best friend! (20 mins)

Show a video clip from a dog show / contest that shows dogs obeying their master / owner. There are plenty of programs on TV that show formal tricks or funny stunts - either is fine. Try looking on www.youtube.com and search for ‘amazing pets’ or ‘dog shows’ and choose a clip suitable for your group that lasts around 3 minutes.

KEY POINT: Just as these dog‘s recognise their owner‘s voice and commands, so we should know our master‘s voice and be obedient to his will for our lives - day in and day out.

Questions to discuss:

• Do you have any pets that can do tricks? How did you teach them to be obedient to you? Will they do it for anyone?
• Are there any of your friends / family that if they rung you up you would instantly know it was them just from their ‘hello’?
• Did you find the sheep rearing game difficult? How much easier would it have been if the shepherd could speak and the sheep could see where they were going? Did the other teams whistles cause you confusion?

Bible study (5 mins)

Read the key passage for today (John 10: 1-30) – you may like to play some videos of sheep herding or produce a PowerPoint presentation showing images and key words / verses from the Bible reading to keep the groups focus / interest. The theme that needs emphasis is ‘belonging to God’. You may like to play the song ‘We Belong Together’ by Mariah Carey in the background or after you have read the passage.

KEY POINT: We can often feel that God has left us – perhaps we have turned away from him or we cannot hear his voice. These times can make us realise how much we need God and that we do belong with and to him.

Long to Be...? (20 mins)

Play the Carling advert ‘Belong’.

http://www.carling.com/contactus/comments/advert.htmlAsk the group to discuss:

Do you feel that you belong to a group as strong as this?

Brainstorm the different groups people feel they belong to.

• What does it mean to belong?
• What groups do you ‘long’ to ‘be’ a part of?

Show a clip from Never Been Kissed where Josie (a news reporter posing as a high school student for the sake of an article exposing what really goes on at school), talks about groups and belonging. The clip starts 1:17:30 and ends at 1:22:10.

• The Carling advert suggests that if we drink Carling we will all be part of the herd. The question is: is that what we really want? Do we
  just want to follow the crowd? Is that true belonging? Does it make us really feel part of a worthwhile group if we dress the same, act the same, drink the same beer etc.? That could be considered a really shallow kind of belonging where as belonging to Jesus gives us freedom to be an individual and life to the max (verse 10), as well as the security and acceptance we crave.

KEY POINT: It would be great to feel that belonging to the church and with fellow believers was like the starlings in the Carling advert, but this is not often the case. However, we can be sure that once we truly decide to belong to God, and opt in to a line of believers that can be traced back thousands of years, God has a firm grip on us (verses 28-30). Whilst we may decide to give up on God or feel far from him, he holds onto us. This was once illustrated to me with an elastic band – one end of the elastic band is round God and the other round me / you. Sometimes we may feel close to God, other times far away (as the band stretches) and we can also turn our back to face away from God. At some point the band can only stretch so far and must ‘ping’ back.

Response (10 mins)

Ask the group to discuss:

• Do you think your friends who aren't Christians long to be a part of the church (community of believers)? Why / why not?
• What should we as Christians do / change in response to this?

 
Read: John 10 vs. 16. Print the ‘Belong’ Carling logo on some squares of card and ask the young people to write their name underneath the logo. Then they should turn the card over and think of friends / family who they would say do not belong to God or his church. They should then write these names on the back of the card. Spend some time praying as a group for all the people written on the cards and place the cards next to each other on the floor or stuck on the wall with the ‘Belong’ logo showing.

Notes for adapting:

For younger groups: Focus more time on what groups they belong to and how they know that they belong to the group. How does this relate to their church experiences?

For older groups: Consider doing a study alongside of this (within this session or another week) on the book of Job. The main story can be summarised by reading chapters 1, 2 and 42. The Message paraphrase of these chapters may be useful. The story of Job may pick up further on John 10: 28-30.

For unchurched young people: Show the Father's Love Letter video (www.fathersloveletter.com to expand on the idea of God knowing us.

For churched young people: Include a meditation on the Psalm 139 to emphasise the theme of belonging to God and being known by God

Suzi Stock is a JNC qualified youth worker, a freelance writer, and tutor to trainee youth workers.