Adult & All Age
Ideas for a focal point with adults and all ages
If you have a flexible worship area, set it out in café style — several small tables, each with an attractive cloth, a tea light-type candle (high street shops sell cheap containers to make tea lights safe) and a small basket of goodies such as satsumas and wrapped sweets.
If your building is more traditional, make up some little ‘token’ bags so that as people arrive they receive the items that are on the tables above — one bag per family or row of seats. (Small squares of cloth, cut with pinking shears and caught up with an elastic band, are fine.)
Have some gentle music playing — some worship songs or the organist playing quietly.
Ideas for a focal point with children and young people
For children
Prepare the room as you would for a party. Put a large ‘Welcome’ sign on the door and, if possible, hang up balloons and streamers. Play some party music. Have some ‘party food’ ready, such as small cakes or biscuits, but do not put that out yet! Welcome each child by name as they come in.
Decorate a table with flowers, a pretty tablecloth, and perhaps some candles and serviettes. Invite the children each to write their names on a small card, and put them on the table. (You can use this table at the end of the session if you want to eat together.)
Make a display of ‘surprise’ items. You could use a Jack-in-the-box, different musical boxes, nests of dolls and pop-up books. Make sure every child has a chance to experience the ‘surprise’.
For young people
Borrow a pop-up or dome-style tent and set it up in the middle of your meeting space.
Erect a gazebo in the middle of your meeting space and conduct the session under it.
Get hold of a potted ‘tree’ and position it in the middle of your meeting space. You could add a bowl of water and loaves of bread around the base.
Use lining paper to create a huge graffiti wall around the space where you meet (see Active prayers ).
Print or draw some speech bubbles on A4 paper. Write different exclamations such as ‘wow’, ‘NO WAY’, ‘Really?!?!?’, on the speech bubbles, and display them in the room in which you meet.
Activities to gather children and young people
For children
Ready for a baby
Put together a collection of things that you might need for a baby, such as nappies, wipes, small clothes, a buggy, a car seat. Ask the children what each item is used for, and why it is important. Talk about getting ready for a baby’s arrival: which things do you need to have ready before he or she is born, and which can wait? Put nappies, wipes and toy baby equipment, if you have it, in a corner, along with dolls, for the children to use throughout the session.
(If you can persuade a parent or grandparent to come with their baby and talk to the children, that’s even better!)
Who is it?
Cut up some pictures of famous people or members of your church, and put each cut-up picture into a separate envelope. Invite the children to choose an envelope and put the picture together again. Do they recognise who it is?
Knock, knock…
Ask the children to tell you some of their favourite jokes or stories that have made them laugh. What kinds of thing make them laugh? With the youngest children, practise making silly faces and silly noises.
Can you recognise it?
Make up a tape of everyday sounds, or use a commercial sound-effects tape. Can the children identify them? Don’t make it too easy! Ask the children to think about what skills they use to recognise the sounds.
A grand day
Ask the children to think of the best welcome they could possibly be given. If they go somewhere new and meet new people, what kind of welcome would they like? Make a list of all the things that they would like to happen. Make sure they think about the attitudes and emotions as well as the material welcome.
For young people
Never!
Using a toy or mobile phone, invite members of the group to act out the most surprising and unexpected thing someone could tell them over the phone. What one phrase, if they heard it when they answered their mobile, would change their entire lives?
So important
Invite one person to pretend to be a VIP. Ask the others to come up and, one by one, mime how they would greet this VIP. Give out prizes for the most over-the-top and unexpected greeting they produce!
Imagine
Provide art materials and paper. Give the young people time and space to reflect on the first verses of this passage and produce some art in response to what they read and how they imagine the scene.
Get ready
Divide the young people into groups or pairs and give each some paper and a pen. Explain that you are going to say an event or activity (holding a birthday party or going on holiday), and each group or pair has 30 seconds to write down as many things as they can that they would do to prepare for that event. After 30 seconds, the group with the most things on its list gets a point. Play the game with several activities, finishing with ‘Meeting God’. The winning team is the one with the most points at the end of the game.
God of the desert spaces,
God of the desert spaces,
where water is sparse and life is hard, we come to you.
Lord of the cosmic universe,
where sound is silent and light unseen,
we come to you.
God of the street and town,
where people pass without a glance,
we worship you.
God of the country,
where rippling streams sing your praise,
we worship you.
God of this place,
God of this congregation,
God of my heart,
I worship you.
We come with all that we are.
Take us, mould us, accept us,
and change our lives forever.
Amen.