Children and Families - Scripture Union NZ

Each year we sing, ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’, but what do we really know about these early witnesses to the birth of Jesus? What did it mean for them to experience a sky filled with angels and be the ones chosen to hear the good news? This year, our Christmas resource will focus on the shepherds and their rags to riches story. From the rags of the field to the riches of heaven, let us follow their journey and discover it anew for ourselves. How does God visit us in our rags and bring riches beyond our imagination? An intergenerational church service

Are you looking for some media or video clips for your Advent and Christmas events or church services? Here are some options to get you started. Some of them are Youtube clips, others are free to download and use.  Learn more about the Shepherds who feature in the Christmas account.  This video series 'Drive Thru History' is well worth a watch, for giving you background information, as well as for playing in a church or community service: The Mystery of the Noisy Neighbour: From the Bible Society UK. Show this free animation in your church services, children's programmes and community events. Suited for a young audience. Discover who Jesus really is... Emmanuel, Rescuer and King. Click here to find out more and download. The Bible Project: The Birth of Jesus - Gospel of Luke Ch. 1-2: If you are looking for an excellent series of clips digging deep into the Bible, these are great! Use them as study material for your Sunday School team or volunteers, before...

When a new baby is born, everyone wants to visit. People bring gifts and they take photographs. When Jesus was a baby some of the first visitors to meet him were these young guys who looked after sheep for a living. Some of them stayed in the fields to make sure the sheep we re okay, and a group of them travellled into Bethlehem to find this baby that the angels told them about.  This is a photograph of a painting of the shepherds. In this photograph the shepherd is an older man. Can you see how he carries the little lamb safe on his shoulders? They would have been a bit smelly. They lived out in the fields, with sheep for company. No showers, no soap and probably no change of clothes. But that doesn’t matter to God. You see, the Christmas story is full of people who weren’t famous or grea t leaders or seen as important. That’s what make it so amazing. God sent angels to tell the shepherds about the saviour of the world. Not Herod, not Augustus. Shepherds.  Do yo...

Luke 2:8 That night in the fields near Bethlehem some shepherds were guarding their sheep. Can you imagine  a cold winters night? Smell the smoke rising from the small fire. Smell the sheep in the pen next to you. Smelly?  Feel the hard ground under you as you sit by the fire, the cold seeping in. Look up and see the stars shining brightly in the dark night sky, and in the distance you can see the faint lights of fires burning in the town of Bethlehem. Look around and see a bunch of young guys sitting with you. They look to be about 10 – 16 years old. These are shepherds. They have the important job of looking after these sheep. Here they are, on this hillside .  But they are excited! They have such a story to share! Everyone is talking at once, the night air filled with laughter and joy and storytelling. And then, every so often they fall silent, and you can see on their faces that they are amazed. They are at peace. Something incredible has happened to them ...

These are a handful of quick ideas you can use to explore the Christmas story with children. They accompany photographs that I took in Israel in 2011, but you can google your own images as well. __________________________________________________________________ Map it!   The places mentioned in the Christmas story were not well known in Jesus day. But they sure became famous! We know about Bethlehem, Nazareth and the hill country of Judea because they all feature in the biblical story of Christmas. It's helpful for children to know where these places are. That way they don't seem like a fairy tale. Bethlehem is not in a land far far away, but is a real place.  Activities: Print out black and white maps of Israel. Give the children gold star stickers to mark the places mentioned in the Christmas story. Provide an atlas or google maps to help you.    Click here for a free black and white map.  Click here for an interactive colour map....

This is the third blog post in our four part series of fabulous Ch ristmas ideas. Click on these links to read the other posts:  1.  Christmas Music 2. Christmas Crafts   And this post, is all about images, media, photos and fonts! Images: There are plenty of websites out there with images you can download. Here are a couple of my favourites. They are free and they are easy to search and use.  - freeimages.com A one stop shop for all the photos you might ever need!   - pixabay.com But wait, there's more! And if you want to add any effects, borders, or text to your images this is an easy to use, fun site: befunky.com Media Clips: Max 7:    Look no further! Max7.org has a fabulous series of Christmas video clips. The narration is straight from the CEV Bible so the children can follow along in their Bibles. And, these videos are around 3 minutes long, just the right length. And, they are FREE to download. Check out the rest o...