Jan Godfrey supplies a host of ideas to choose from for exploring the big outdoors with your church.
Planning
Hopefully in the summer months, there will be opportunities to hold church-based activities outside to include all ages and visitors - a mixture of fellowship and outreach. Many churches hold outdoor services, but there is a lot more you can do. The weather being fickle, do plan for indoor alternatives, but with the emphasis still on the outdoor world as a background for worship and celebration.
Make the most of all ages sharing the joy and wonder of God's creation in parks or gardens, commons or coast, farms or fields.
Questions
Whatever you do, these are things to consider together.
- How can we discover God at work outside?
- How can we celebrate God's provision?
- What can we experience of God with our senses?
- Are there ways that we can enjoy being with God that are special to being outside?
- How can we best encourage all-age fellowship outdoors?
- How can we best use our surroundings - town, suburbs or countryside?
- What would be an appropriate theme? Rainbows are used here as one example but what about: the senses, thanksgiving, creation, exploration, discovery, God's world, and so on?
Use your senses
Have a walk together. Stop at intervals to be very still and smell, see, hear, and feel what is going on around you. Look for different colours, then see what's high (clouds, birds, buildings) and what's low down, and what you are standing on. Pray, or sing choruses or a hymn thanking God for your surroundings. Take home anything found or picked - as allowed - to make a display. Thank God for our senses.
A procession
Have a simple 'Jesus' walk round your local area, carrying banners. It could be a prayer walk, praying for different places as you go. If you have large numbers processing, it's worth telling the police what you are intending.
Banners
For simple but effective banners, use large pieces of card with dowel rod taped to each side for strength. Put 'Jesus' in large decorated letters. Add the name of your church, and maybe some symbols, like a cross, dove or fish.
Streamers
Cut packs of crêpe across the width in strips. Tape the ends of different coloured strips together to make streamers to wave.
Shakers
Tape two paper cups together, rim to rim, with dried peas or rice inside. Decorate, and add small streamers at each end.
Balloons
Have a bunch of helium balloons ready to launch at the end of your walk. Attach to each a small label saying, 'God loves you' or something similar. Sing a hymn as the balloons go, or say a prayer beforehand.
Being dramatic
If you have the resources, why not organise a pageant as outreach to visitors or fringe church members? Maybe it could be a short history of your church or of local Christianity. It would need organising well in advance.
Or use a simple humorous sketch in the context of an outdoor service. (There's one for puppets below.)
A picnic
Bring and share picnic or barbecue food. Encourage people to mingle, by asking them to change places for different parts of the meal. Then have games, worship songs and prayers.
Games
1 Making groups
Animal crackers
Give everyone a piece of paper picturing an animal. All make appropriate noises until they have found everyone in their group.
Colours
Alternatively, issue everyone with counters or lengths of wool of colours of the rainbow. Find everyone of the same colour. Tie wool together to make a circle.
2 Treasure hunt
Have a list of items to find in a defined area. Groups of players hunt, leaving the items untouched but writing down their location.
For the following examples, use the real thing, toys, pictures or models: Peter's net, Caesar's coin, Adam's apple, Eve's snake, Goliath's head, Balaam's ass, Ruth's ring, Paul's letter, Job's comforter (a dummy), Jacob's ladder, Mary's baby, Martha's saucepan, Aaron's rod, Noah's ark.
Should you need a tie-break, see who knows most about the characters involved!
3 Quiz
Hold an all-age quiz with work-sheets to find out facts about the surroundings of your church building.
Outdoor songs
Think of a world without any flowers (JP)
For the beauty of the earth (JP)
All things bright and beautiful (JP, MP)
By blue Galilee (JP)
Colours of day (JP)
Oh Lord my God (JP, MP)
Yes, God is good (JP, MP)
Jesus is Lord (JP, MP, SF)
My God is so big (JP)
Prayer
- Pray - in a circle, holding hands, or holding symbols of the theme, like different coloured ribbons for rainbows.
- Living water - write prayers on paper boats, sail on stream or pond.
- Use Psalm 8 as a basis for prayer, or the version for little ones below.
For
For all your gifts we praise you, Lord,
for sun and sky and sea;
for clouds and rain and rushing wind,
for every flower and tree.
For dragonflies and butterflies,
for animals and birds;
for gardens, parks and city streets,
for waterfalls and woods.
For farms and fields of wheat and corn,
for golden harvest crops;
for frost and ice and desert sand,
for snowy mountain tops.
For stars that twinkle in the night,
for fishes in the deep;
for rivers, streams and rainbows,
for hills and valleys steep.
Forever great, forever true,
forever Heaven's king;
forever I will sing your praise,
for making EVERYTHING!
Extra ideas
- Bark rubbing to explore textures.
- Bubble blowing to see rainbow colours.
- Kite flying to remind of God's power.
- Response - ask everyone to write a poem or prayer or draw a picture.
- God clothes the flowers - press wild flowers and grasses.
- Sing a new song - fit new words to a known tune.
- Play team games, or rounders, football or cricket.
- Three-in-one. Challenge people to find and take home a cloverleaf to remember Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- Display interesting items found, like feathers, stones, flowers and so on. Invite anyone who wants to talk about their item if it reminds them of God in a special way.
- Snap! Don 't forget a group photograph.
Books
This Amazing World , Lois Rock, Lion Publishing, 2002, ISBN 0754946674.
Poems and Prayers for a Better World , Su Box & Felicity Henderson (eds), Lion Publishing, 2001, ISBN 0754938868.
What a Wonderful World , Pat Alexander, Lion Publishing, 2002, ISBN 0754938310.
Song
Don't blame me
(Tune, 'Three blind mice')
Don't blame me,
don't blame me,
it's such a lovely tree,
with goodies all for free;
it's full of fruit so juicy and sweet,
rosy and ripe and a special treat,
all I want is a bite to eat,
so don't blame me!
Don't tempt me,
don't tempt me,
I shan't touch the tree,
however good to see;
so go away and stay away,
and don't come back another day,
we know that God is good - HOORAY!
so don't tempt me!