Sessions
Starchasers: Sessions
Summer Term 2009: Life in the Spirit
Our series for the Summer term is “Life in the Spirit” in which we’ll be looking at what it’s like to live as a Christian and what hope Christians have for the future. The Holy Spirit helps us and strengthens us as in our Christian life and it is also the “firstfruits” of the glory that lies ahead.
28th June – Press on towards the goal (Philippians 3v12-21)
Theme – We need to keep going in life in the Spirit
Our session this week had a gardening flavour to it. Mary shared with us her joy as a new allotment holder and she talked us through the process of growing courgettes.
A courgette plant started life as a small seed but as as you watered it and it got warmed by the sun the seed grew into a shoot and then a small plant. As it continued to grow you had to watch out for problems like snails and weeds as they could stop the plant growing. It took a while for the plant to grow but Mary kept going as she thought of the prize that lay at the end of it, some delicious courgettes that she had grown herself.
And to cap it all off Mary bought along a fully grown courgette plant that she had dug up that morning. It was massive! and you could see 3 or 4 courgettes growing on this one plant. Well worth all the effort!
Mary said that living as a Christian was a bit like growing plants. Our faith can start off as a small seed but it can grow. As we learn more about God and get encouraged by other Christians our faith grows. However, on the way are difficulties, things that can put us off and stop us growing or even cause us to lose our faith. At these times it’s important to think about what the prize is at the end of it, what we as Christians are striving for – A perfect life with God with a new heaven and a new earth (more next session!). By keeping our eyes on that prize, the promise that Jesus will return, we will continue to grow to be the people that God wants us to be.
In our small groups we talked more about some of the difficulties we might face as Christians and what we can do to help us at those difficult times. We thought of things like finding out more about God from the Bible, talking to God and listening to God through prayer, going to church to worship and praise God and being encouraged by Christian friends and families around us. Keep growing, keep changing and keep our eyes on what lies ahead!
14th June – Gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12)
Theme – We all have different gifts but need to work together as part of one body
This week we were thinking of gifts and in particular gifts of the Spirit, another way the Holy Spirit helps us prepare for Jesus’ return.
We started off inviting the leaders up the front to the hot-set. They had to tell us the best present they had ever received and why it was so good. Then they had to tell us about a gift of the Spirit they had been given or someone else they knew had been given. They told us why the gift of the spirit was so good and how could it could be used to help others.
We then got two of the kids to read 1 Corinthians 12 v4-11. We had a memory test to see how many of the gifts in the passage the kids could remember. And then we looked again at what we were supposed to do with the gifts – to support, serve and encourage each other.
In the second part of the session. We looked at the human body – we drew a picture of a stick-man and a stick-woman in our two teams, Hot and Cool. We then asked the teams to think of different things that the different parts of the body are good at – e.g. head for thinking, feet for walking, hands for holding, mouth for talking & eating etc.
The idea was to show that although the parts of the body are different to each other each body part has something useful to do. And the body needs all these different parts to work properly.
And so with us and the Gifts of the Spirit. We are all different but we all have something useful to do. The body, the church, needs all these different people to work properly.
24th May – Our Helper (Romans 8 )
Theme – The Holy Spirit helps us pray
This week we were looking at how the Holy Spirit helps us and in particular how it helps us pray.
Our two new friends, Boris and Lucy, were back again and this time we see Boris struggling with a pair of headphones he’s just bought. He’d love to listen to his music on them but he can’t get them on his head as his arms are too weak (well he is just a puppet). But with Lucy’s help he managed to get them on. She helped him with something he was finding difficult.
That lead into talking about the Holy Spirit. There are some bits of living as God wants us to live that we find difficult but God doesn’t leave us to fend for ourselves. He has given us the Holy Spirit to help us. And one of the ways is to help us to pray. Sometimes we aren’t sure what to pray for or how we ought to pray for something but the Spirit helps us. The Spirit does this with groans that can’t be put into words.
What does that look like? Well we aren’t exactly sure but we listened to some pieces of music with no words (Morning, Jupiter & Star Wars Imperial March) and asked – how did they make us feel? – what were they trying to say? And we can see how things could be expressed without using words.
And to finish we put this into practise by praying in our small groups.
10th May – Pentecost: The Holy Spirit Comes (Acts 2, Romans 8v9-25)
Theme – God kept His promise about the Holy Spirit and we can trust that Jesus will return
We met two new friends at Starchasers this week, Boris and Lucy. Boris was an orang-utan, which is like a gorilla but hairer and orange-er, and Lucy was a girl, which is like a boy but less hairy and less orange.
Boris loved bananas and Lucy loved chocolate and both promised to go to the shop for me (located under the table conveniently) and get me a banana and a chocolate bar respectively. When they returned Boris had eaten the banana on the way home so didn’t keep his promise to me but Lucy had kept her promise and bought me a chocolate bar. We asked the kids who they would trust more to go to the shop the next day to get a banana / chocolate bar. I said I’d trust Lucy more next time as she kept the first promise so was someone I’d trust to keep their promise next time.
We then looked at the story of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came and when God kept the first of the two promises we looked at last week. We re-enacted the story and heard a noise like a strong wind, saw flames of fire that split up and stood over us and then we could speak different languages. The Holy Spirit gave the disciples the power to speak different languages and this meant lots of people from different countries, who were in Jerusalem at the time, could understand them and hear them talking about Jesus.
Peter stood up and told the crowd about this very special person, Jesus. He told them about the wonders and miracles Jesus did. He told them that Jesus died and rose from the dead. And he told the crowd that they needed to say sorry to God and follow & obey Him. That day over 3,000 people decided to follow God and were baptised. What a way for God to keep the first promise!
In the final section we then looked at the two promises from last week again. If God kept the first promise could we trust Him to keep the second promise – that Jesus would return? Yes! In fact God has kept all His promises, every single one, so we can definitely trust Him.
And the Holy Spirit is more than just God keeping His promise, it’s a guarantee that Jesus will return, that we will share in this future glory with God. The Holy Spirit isn’t just something the disciples received, it’s something that every Christian receives. If you’re a Christian the Bible says you will have the Holy spirit. So every Christian has the Holy Spirit, every Christian has that guarantee that Jesus will return.
26th April – Ascension: Two promises (Acts 1v1-11)
Theme – God promised the Holy Spirit & that Jesus would return
This week at Starchasers we were thinking about things that we look forward to. We thought about some things we’re looking forward to – holidays, birthdays, football match, getting a new kitchen. We thought about how it made us feel (excited, nervous, happy, pleased, can’t wait) and we thought about how we would have to prepare for these things (e.g. pack, send out invites, train, clean room). When we look forward to something we feel excited about it and we have to prepare for it.
We then looked at what happened to Jesus after Easter. What did Jesus do when He came back from the dead? We learnt about Him appearing to over 500 people after His death. And we learnt about a promise that Jesus gave His disciples, His closest friends:
Promise 1: In a few days you will be baptised by the Holy Spirit
And one day when Jesus and His friends were together He told them again the Holy spirit was coming. He also told them to tell people all about what they had seen and to tell people all about Jesus. To tell people all over the city, Jerusalem. To tell people all over the country, Judea. To tell people all over the world.
When Jesus finished speaking He rose up into the sky, up into heaven and a large cloud hid Jesus from their sight. The disciples stood staring at the sky and we stood staring up through the skylight at this point in the story.
While we were doing this two men dressed in white appeared on the video screen. They told us that this same Jesus we’d seen go up into heaven would come back the same way we saw Him go. And this was the second promise we learnt about:
Promise 2: Jesus will return.
So the disciples had two promises to look forward to and we discussed how they would have felt and what they would have done to prepare for these two things. And we are still waiting for Jesus to return and we are still looking forward to Him coming back.
The leaders shared how they felt about Jesus returning (excited, nervous, happy) and some of the things we should do to prepare for Jesus coming back (tell others about Jesus, obey Jesus and live how He wants us to, Enjoy God).
For the rest of this term we’re going to be looking at this further. We’re going to see how the Holy Spirit helps prepare us for Jesus coming back. We’re also going to see how the Holy Spirit is a guarantee that Jesus is coming back.
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