Money is not God
Tuesday, 16 November, 2004
On Sunday we did our first Cash Values lesson at Sunday school: “Money is not God”. We started in the backyard of the little house behind the church hall by playing “Death Angels”. Each child was given some matchsticks (all different amounts). They could gain more matchsticks if they won Stone, Paper Scissors with the other kids. Using those matchsticks, they could then buy cars (5 matchsticks) or houses (10 matchsticks). However, they had to beware of the Death Angels who would chase them around; if they were tipped, then the game is over for them and they are out. (This game works much better if you have stacks of kids; on this day we only had 10 kids and it wasn't as fun.)
We headed inside and I made the kids sing “The Greatest Treasure” from Colin Buchanan's Practise Being Godly (“The greatest treasure in the whole wide world is ... peace with God!”). Rowan did a mission spot on Nepal. He asked, “Who here can guess what the main religion is in Nepal?” One kid put up his hand and said, “Baptism!” I made a short announcement about the new unit and the collection that we would be taking up every week and then we broke up into girls and boys.
Tim and I only had three girls in our group which was heaps disappointing but it did make teaching them fairly easy. We started with a Mintie hunt; I hid 40 Minties in the two rooms we used and they found them all. The winner got more Minties as a prize. Then I said to them, “If you had a million dollars, what would you spend it on?” and I gave them a whole bunch of junk mail catalogues and got them to make wish lists using the pictures. One of our girls was cutting out pictures of potatoes, cucumbers and asparagus, saying, “I like vegetables.” I said to her, “With a million dollers you could hire someone to cook healthy food for you.” She said, “No, I prefer to do the work myself,” and “I need to watch what I eat so I don't get fat.” (This girl is only 8 years old; I can't believe she's already worrying about her weight.)
I got the girls to put their wishlists in some paper treasure boxes I had made for them. And then, using the objects they had on their lists, I told the parable of the rich fool but updated for their context (so it was about a girl, not a man, and she won a billion dollars in the lottery). I asked them some questions to finish off to get them to think about the story I had just told them. I asked them, “What is our real treasure?” After a bit of thinking and prodding, they were able to come up with things like, “Peace with God” (oh good, they had been listening as we were singing!), “Relationship with God” and “Eternal life in heaven”. I then told them to replace the wishlists with the real treasure but some of them were reluctant to take their wishlists out of their treasure boxes. I wonder what that is saying about their hearts ...
We finished off with prayer and then I sent them off to supper. I'm looking forward to next week to see how they go with “God owns all the money”.
Blinks:
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Other comments
Wow, that sounds like heaps of fun! Maybe I’ll quit grown-up church and head back to Sunday School…
Is it hard to teach kids things like that?
Hmm. I just tried following the link to Denise’s blog and all I got was a black screen with ‘Sticky Beak’ written in the top left-hand corner…
There’s probably not much you can do about it since it’s not your blog but it’s worth knowing I guess
hehe.she needs to change the link
and add.
....natter/index.php
because i also have an index.html file there.
karen?
Haydn, it’s not hard to teach the kids things like that provided you know your main point and you can teach it creatively. With Sunday school, I follow the Anglican Youthworks structure of introduction (ie. something to get them into the topic), body (the Bible bit—usually the Bible story done in some way, shape or form) and conclusion (questions to see whether they were paying attention during the body, whether they “get” the basic concept, as well as questions to get them to think about how to apply it). For me, the bit that takes the most time is working out how to do it creatively and simply so that I’m operating on their level and not that of an adult’s.
Fuzzi, I’m updating my blogroll link just for you but if I were you, I’d get rid of the index.html file or call it something else; it’s bad web practice to have both of them in there because it makes much more sense for me to link to the directory, not the index file of the directory.
yup.. i’ll get rid of it the next time i need to upload something.. the index html was just from before, cos i had ppl trying ot look at that mainfile….. thanks for the erm advice.. lazy to remove it
i think hard also depends on ur natural abilities as well to work with kids, and be able to choose decisively what things will work and communicate the point across to them. i’m sure a lot of it comes with practice though.
I’ve always been wary of kids ministry simply because I haven’t been around kids that much and don’t really know what ‘makes them tick’.
Ministry with teenagers sounds more interesting though but I guess the problem with them is that their hormones get in the way of concentration
H.
I haven’t done much ministry with teens but I’d like to try. The advantages of working with teens is that they are mature enough to study the Bible straight from the text rather than you having to package it in such a way that they can engage with it without getting bored (which is what I have to do with my kids who are 7-10 years old; very few of them can just sit there and read the Bible). Teens are also better at thinking abstractly and engaging with issues than kids are.