Year A. 2nd Term. Lesson 4. We believe the church is the family of God and the body of Christ

Scripture: for teacher background:  1 Peter 2:4,5  Ephesians 2:19-22  and 3:15; 1 Corinthians 12:12-28

Making contact:

Put your hands together with your fingers interlinking. Put your 2 pointer (2^nd) fingers up straight to meet at the point. You have made a church with a steeple. 

Use your thumbs as double doors. 

You say to the children “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple, look inside and where are the people? Now do the same but interlock you fingers facing down so that when you open the doors all you fingers are inside the church.

 I hope you understand this explanation. It is one that really needs to be demonstrated. Otherwise just talk about what a church is. Is it the bricks? Does the building have to have a steeple and an organ? What is church really about?

Another idea is to play tangles. 

The children form groups of about 7 children and stand in a tight circle. 

They close their eyes and reach their arms out in front of them. They grab 2 hands with their 2 hands. Then they open their eyes. 

Just first check that no one is holding both hands of someone else. They need to have 2 hands of different people. 

Then without letting go they must climb over and under all the joined hands to loosen the tangle. It usually does come to a perfect circle or 2 interlocking circles.

Tell them that this game reminds you of the church -all linked together in the name of Jesus.

 Exploration:

When the first people believed in Jesus they used to meet in the Jewish synagogues and the temple because they were mostly Jewish people who believed that their Messiah was Jesus. 

What happened after a while is that the Jewish people who didn’t believe in Jesus thought that these Christians were lying and evil and they threw them out of their places of worship. 

Gentiles also started believing in Jesus. The Christians had to meet in secret quite often and they had no buildings anyway and they always met in homes or next to a river, or under a tree. 

It was only much later that buildings were built especially for Christians to worship God in.

The mistake lots of people make is that they think the church buildings are the church. 

We say: “I am going to church.”  But it is the people who are the church. People who love Jesus are like living bricks. We are all being built together as God’s church.

 The church is also similar to a family. We all belong together and God is our Father. We are all brothers and sisters if we believe in Jesus. It’s like our surnames are all the same when we become Christian.

My name is……………Child of God. Your name is ………………..Child of God.

There may be different denominations, like Methodist, Baptist, Anglican etc, but as long as all these different churches believe in Jesus they are all actually ONE church and ONE family.

The other picture the Bible uses to explain the church is that it is like a body. 

Jesus is the head and we are all members of the Body of Christ. That is why we may look different and do different jobs in the church, but each one is so special and important.

 Some people do speaking jobs like teaching and preaching. Other people do music. Some people do the visiting of the sick and tidying up and cleaning. The little children are also part of this body. 

You might feel like just the little toe and not so important, but have you ever had a sore toe? The whole body aches when one part is sore. 

So as Jesus’ body, the church, we stick together and help each other. We help each other to grow in our faith. These lessons are helping what you believe.

Today we are saying we believe the church is the family of God and the body of Christ.

Application

Today we have learnt that the church is the family of God and the Body of Christ.

We are like living bricks built together. 

Although it is lovely to have a building to meet in, that building is not the ACTUAL church – so you can have a church as long as 2 or 3 meet in the name of Jesus.

 It can be in a home, under a tree or anywhere. It can be any size and anywhere in the world. The thing that counts the most is who is the Head. If it isn’t Jesus, then it isn’t the Church of God.

Challenge to Mission

There may be places in the world that don’t have a group of Christians meeting together. Maybe a church group hasn’t been started there yet.

That is where missionaries can go and tell the people about Jesus. When they believe then they form groups- families of God – a church and then they worship and grow and learn together like we are.

How can you help a group like this? Find out about a missionary that you can support in some way. Maybe you can even just write a letter to some children in a new church somewhere else in the world.

 Ask your church leaders if they know about any missionaries and what you could do to encourage them. Of course, you can also be a missionary right where you are and when you go to school you can tell people about Jesus and meet together in a group to pray.

Consolidation

 The worksheet has people shapes to colour in. If only the people with dots are coloured in then they form the shape of a church building, showing the children that the church is really people who follow Jesus.

Belief Statement: We believe the church is the family of God and the body of Christ

Memory Verse

“All of you are Christ’s body, and each one is a part of it.”  1 Cor 12:27