Search the siteAn Heroic MinistryIntroducing Pastor Steven from Rwanda:
Pastor Steven Turikunkiko has set up a community in Rwanda for victims of the genocide. 160 widows & teenagers & 80 younger children live with him; farming, sharing their lives and caring for those dying from AIDS. The community subsists on less than $1 per person per day. At enormous personal sacrifice, Pastor Steven and his wife have also adopted 20 orphans - who live with them and their 2 other children. For more information on Steven and this incredible community of hope, click here
Online BibleVerse of the dayYWI - working with...YWI is pleased to work in association with
CCP, UK
Fuller Youth Institute, US
Sophia Network, UK
ApCsel29, Hungary
Ungdomsarbeid, Norway
ParaLideres.org
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Creator God
PREPARATION: Make a number of paper aeroplanes. Make each one in a slightly different way: carefully, sloppily, artistically, fussily, expensively, hastily, impractically (so that it won't fly!), blindfolded... Photocopy an abstract modern painting and a traditional picture. Hang them on the wall alongside a ‘picture’ of your own, made from random inkblots and scribbled lines. Find three readers for the first activity - it works much better if they've practised beforehand.
DESIGN OR DISASTER (10 mins) Announce that you are going to have a cultural evening. Already you have three great paintings on the wall (point them out and ask which they'd pay most money for). And now you're going to read some poetry together. Appoint a panel of ‘experts’ to judge the poetry. Have three poems read out: one a traditional rhyming one (‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’... type), one a more difficult modern one, and one faked by yourself which is completely meaningless (hint: one easy way is to turn to the index of a poetry book in the library, and just copy out seven or eight of the first lines of poems, one after another! Or you can just put any words and phrases in a random order). Ask the panel what they thought of the poetry. Finally reveal that one poem, and one picture, was a fake - but which? Get them to vote before you tell them the answer. Then say: the ‘traditional’ artworks were obviously created by somebody; that was easy to see. The modern stuff is more difficult. And sometimes we might be fooled into thinking that objects which really were created by somebody are actually just chance - because we fail to see the marks of the maker.
Read Romans 1:20-23. Say: God's creation reveals the marks of its maker. We need to recognize that we aren't chance productions! Scientists say that at the first moment of the Big Bang, four vital forces had to be matched precisely to one another - otherwise the universe would never have happened. The chance of just two of these forces being matched is 1 in 1060 - which is a 1 with 60 noughts behind it (start drawing this to show them what a big number it is: 1,000,000,000,000,000...)
The design of God's creation shows that we aren't an accident in space. But if God is a creator, as the Bible teaches, what does that mean for our lives?
PART OF A DESIGN (10 mins) Give two teams each a jigsaw to complete within three minutes. In each case, there's one piece missing. When they've finished all they can, award a prize to the faster team, then ask them to describe what the missing piece must look like. Then show the missing piece and see how accurate they were. Say: you can describe the missing piece because it isn't random. It's made to fit into the design in a special, unique way. There's no other piece quite like it. And up until the final day of God's creation, humankind was the missing piece of the jigsaw. Read Genesis 1:26-30 and ask: what's special about our place in the creator's design?
(These points should emerge:
End the discussion by reading Psalm 8:3-9.
MADE BY A MASTER (10 mins) Divide into small groups. Give each one or two paper aeroplanes. Say: each of these was made in a different way - e.g. ‘hastily’ or ‘scientifically’. Examine them, take them apart, and see what you can detect about the way they were created. After a few minutes check results and reveal answers. Say: in the same way, God's creation reveals what he's like... for example? (Make a list of their suggestions on OHP or flipchart. E.g.: care and intricacy; variety; order; abundance; regularity and faithfulness; balance; beauty in ways that aren't strictly necessary; pleasure-giving...) Ask: what does this suggest about how God wants us to experience life?
STILL IN BUSINESS (10 mins) Divide into two teams. The leader of each stands on a chair at one end of the room, holding a bucket. The rest of the team are at the other end with a pile of newspapers, out of which they have to manufacture paper ‘snowballs’ to throw into the bucket. Every time a snowball lands in the bucket they score a point. They have three minutes to score as many points as possible... At the end, say: the points were scored by the team leaders on the chair. But they'd have been useless without the continual supply of snowballs - and if the others ever stopped making them, they'd have been sunk. They were completely dependent on the unceasing activity of the others. In the same way, God isn't finished with his creation. He still sustains it and breathes life into it. If he ever stopped, our world would disappear instantly, just as the world of Neighbours or Casualty disappears when you switch off the telly. As long as you grant it electricity, you ‘hold it in being’; but when you stop - it's the end. So we shouldn't think of God's creation as something finished millennia ago! He's just as involved as ever he was. Read John 5:17 and ask: do we recognize how dependent we are on God for every breath, every moment we live?
LIKE FATHER LIKE SON (10 mins) But there's more. If God is a creative God, and we're made in is likeness, we should be creative too. Christians should reflect his exciting, innovative, attractive nature; we shouldn't be boring, drab, predictable people. Point out the words you previously wrote on the OHP. We can't all be poets or artists, but we can all portray these qualities in the way we live. Divide into small groups and discuss for five minutes: how can we show these qualities better...
Share conclusions.
WRAP-UP (5 mins) Remind them of what it feels like to make something - a picture, a cake, a photograph, a song. It's yours. It belongs to you. You feel protective and proprietorial. You take pride in it. If we aren't accidental, but have a Creator, he has rights over us and he wants to feel proud of us. End by praying that this week we'll reflect his nature in the way we live and give him pleasure in his craftsmanship.
John Allan is based in the Uk and is a regular contributor to Youthwork International
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MEETING AIM: This is the final part of a series of meetings exploring the nature of God. But it can also be used on its own. Its objective is to help teenagers recognize the implications of God's creative character for us: we're responsible to him; we share in his creativity; we depend on his sustaining care. Too often ‘creation’ is thought of as just a controversial concept opposed to ‘evolution’; that's not the issue here at all, although you may be asked some questions about evolution, so you'll need to be clear in your own thinking before tackling the session.
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