Outline act of worship for all ages

Your choice

• Have you ever had to make choices quickly? Let’s try! Invite three volunteers to come out. To the first offer a £1 coin in one hand, and a bag with 22 five pence coins (£1.10) in the other – they have three seconds to choose. If they don’t do it quickly enough, offer them to someone else. To the next person offer a bar of chocolate and a bag of chocolate buttons or pieces (one option a little heavier than the other). Again, three seconds to choose or move on. Finally, offer a large bag and small bag without saying what is in them – it could be anything you choose, or nothing, but make them the same. Reveal what the choices were. Did the choosers make the best choices? Ask them why they chose as they did. Today we are exploring choices and consequences. 

First impressions

You could also use the image and following questions to help introduce the theme.

Click on the image to view a larger version or use the Jump menu to go to This week's images. For artist's details, see this issue's illustrators.

Questions

• Can you think of an action you have taken that has caused big ripples?
• Where was God in the decision you took?
• Are you aware of situations in the news where big decisions must be made? How might you pray for the decision-makers?

1 Samuel 8:4-11,(12-15),16-20,(11:14-15)

Like many Old Testament stories with origins in an oral tradition, this passage will benefit from being read by someone who knows how to tell a story and captivate an audience. For example, listen to this week’s story as told by David Kossoff (in his own version/translation) – it begins 2 minutes 36 seconds into the video. You might like to listen to this instead of reading the passage, but if you have someone who can do this live – perhaps using The Message version, or similar – even better!

The reading could be accompanied by actors who mime the action, or by slides that illustrate it – for example, the series of images for this passage by Free Bible images.

Mark 3:20-35 

Divide those present into groups of five or more. Pose this scenario: Jesus’ family in Nazareth has a problem. It runs a respectable carpentry business; family members are pillars of the local community. Jesus – who worked brilliantly in the carpenter’s shop – has left home. He appears to have become a travelling vagabond, drawing crowds with his teaching, healing and casting out demons. He is attracting negative attention from scribes who have come up from Jerusalem. He’s out in the Galilean countryside but word is getting back to Nazareth about what he’s doing. What are your choices? 

Give each group one character from the Gospel story, each with a different perspective to consider: a scribe from Jerusalem; Jesus himself; Jesus’ brother or sister, involved in the family business; Jesus’ mother; someone healed by Jesus. Invite everyone to listen to the reading, noting how their character reacts. Then give 10 minutes for the groups to discuss: From the perspective of their character, what choices do they have? Or what do they want to suggest to others in the group? Should Jesus go home or not? Invite feedback. 

Active worship

Make an influencer collage   W E A

What helps us make good choices?

You will need: a range of magazines, catalogues, holiday
brochures, charity leaflets and similar; large sheets of paper, scissors, glue sticks.

• Working in small groups, invite people to discuss the place of advertising in our lives. What impact does it have on the way we use our time and spend our money? What other factors – things, people, circumstances, etc. – influence the choices and decisions we make?
• After this general discussion, focus on what influences and enables us to make good, positive and life-giving decisions – choices that bear good fruit and are pleasing to God. Cut out images and words from the magazines, catalogues and
  leaflets to make a collage that illustrates this. The colleg can then be a focus for corporate prayer.

Change stations  W E S 

Reflecting on change 

You will need: A5 card, paper, seeds, kitchen roll.

• Use dictionaries of quotations or web-based dictionaries to help you find about eight to ten brief quotes or phrases about change, e.g. ‘Be the change you long to be’. There are plenty to be found. Print each phrase once onto an A5 card, and also onto multiple small slips of paper – so that you end up with enough slips for everyone to have two or three different ones. Set up a number of stations (e.g. small tables), one for each quote/phrase, on which are placed one of the phrases (the card and its multiple small copies), a small bowl of seeds and plate with moistened kitchen roll on it.
• Invite people to make a journey round the stations, in any order they wish, and to ‘plant’ some seeds beside the quotes they like best, and to take a copy of the quote away with them as a reminder. Suggest (though no need to enforce) that people restrict themselves to a manageable two or three phrases.

Testimony  W A 

Sharing experience of change and its consequences.

You will need: large sheet of paper, pens and sticky notes.

• In advance, recruit a few people who are willing to talk about their daily/working lives. NB this is an opportunity to explore how faith and the church community can support the decisions that people have to make in their lives outside church, not just paid employment. In what follows ‘workplace’ is simply shorthand for that context, whatever it may be.
• Ask the volunteers questions such as: What difficult choices do you have to make in your ‘workplace’? How does your faith impact on what you do? Are there times when you have had to do things that you found difficult to reconcile with your faith? What did you do in such circumstances?

A simple worship activity    W E S 

Listening to God.

Throughout today’s worship, keep periods of silence. Start with – say, five seconds. Progressively make them longer – up to, say, 20 or 30 seconds, introducing them with: ‘Let us be still before God for a moment’.

• Near the end of your worship, introduce a more structured time of prayer with silence. Recap each of the elements from the very start, inviting people to think about what you did and why, then to pray in silence about that subject. Encourage people to speak to God in the silence; but also to spend as much time being silent before God – listening – as speaking. Make at least one of the silences a period of about two minutes. Conclude the prayer with words that will be familiar to all present (perhaps the Lord’s Prayer).
• Some may feel awkward or embarrassed by long silences, so you may wish to talk through people’s reactions to this worship activity.

Activity sheet 

• Look at the words of the song ‘Be thou my vision’ – or Rend Collective’s version, ‘You are my Vision’ (Video; Lyrics), words said or sung as a prayer about how Jesus should be at the centre of all our decision-making. Invite people to share with neighbours what stands out for them about choices and consequences. Then sing, or listen to the song .    E A 

Go with God 24/7   W E A 

Encourage everyone to put their faith into action

Make a note of decisions and choices you make each day this week. In your prayer time, reflect on how the decisions, and especially their consequences, may have helped or hindered you or other people.

Thrive

Give out the
Thrive resource 
to encourage
faith at home.