Faith Week 1. Element of the Month: Faith confi dent trust in God. The Big Idea: We must choose to live by faith.

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1 At-A-Glance Service Schedule 3-5 minutes Welcome & Prayer minutes Music and Worship 6-8 minutes EOM/VOM 8-10 minutes The Big Idea Skit 3-5 minutes Offering 4-6 minutes The Big Idea Video Faith Week 1 Element of the Month: Faith confi dent trust in God. The Big Idea: We must choose to live by faith. 3-5 minutes Transition Music minutes Bible Lesson 5-10 minutes Application & Review Optional: Music/Activities to fill time as needed This is the period just before you begin church. It typically lasts for 3-5 minutes. during this time, play music and encourage your team to greet as many children as possible. encourage kids to use this time to get a drink of water or use the bathroom. You can also use this time to go over any rules or announcements about up and coming events. Stop and think for just a moment about how many choices you have made today. If you re reading this fi rst thing in the morning, the list of choices you ve made today may be fairly short and easy to remember. But, if you are reading this near bedtime, you d have a very diffi cult time remembering all of the choices you ve made today. except for when we are sleeping, we are literally making choices constantly. What to wear? What to eat? Where to go? What to read? What to say? What to not say? It can make us tired just thinking about all those choices. Some choices are made and have little impact on the rest of our day, like tying your left shoe fi rst today instead of your right shoe being the fi rst one you tie. But there are other choices that will have an effect on the way we make lots of other choices. This month, you ll be leading your kids to learn about faith. You ll be able to help them learn how to confi dently trust in God. The fi rst step of faith is the most important, in that it requires a personal, individual choice to live by faith. When we live by faith, it changes the way we view the world and the people who live here with us. Living by faith also changes the way we think about God and his involvement in our every day lives. We re praying your faith will be strengthened each day as you live by faith in God and pass along this lesson to your group. Welcome Hey everyone, welcome to (Insert the name of your kids worship service)! What a wonderful opportunity we have to spend this time together wor- 1

2 At-A-Glance Service Schedule 3-5 minutes Welcome & Prayer minutes Music and Worship shiping and learning about the plans God has for us. I hope you are so excited to be here and ready to go! If you are, jump up and down three times and yell, I am! encourage response. Nice! I had a feeling you were ready, but there s one thing we need to do first. We need to start things off right by talking with the Lord. Will you bow your heads please? Prayer 6-8 minutes EOM/VOM 8-10 minutes The Big Idea Skit 3-5 minutes Offering 4-6 minutes The Big Idea Video 3-5 minutes Transition Music minutes Bible Lesson 5-10 minutes Application & Review Optional: Music/Activities to fill time as needed Kids are never too young to understand the value of prayer or appreciate the gift it is to us from God. Remind them that we are talking to the Creator of the Universe when we pray and that he cares about us and actually enjoys his time talking with us. Make sure prayer time in your kids worship setting is valued and respected. encourage the kids to spend time talking to God throughout their day, not just at meals or bedtime. Dear Lord, We praise You and thank You for allowing us to be in your house today. We believe You are right in the midst of us. At this very second we know we are under Your protection and in Your sight. Please help us worship You in song, with our offering and with our attention to what Your Word says. We love You and ask You to help us feel Your presence. In Jesus name we pray, Amen. Worship in Song during this segment, choose 3-4 songs totaling minutes. Choose the songs that are relevant to your students and also reinforce the biblical theme for today. Note: during this fi rst worship section, select songs that are high energy and engaging. This will help get the kids excited and ready to participate in the service. Introduce the Element of the Month (EOM) display the eom slide. Let s all take a moment to get familiar with our new Element of the Month. This month we re going to learn some awesome truths from the Lord about Faith. Let s read the definition for Faith together now. Read the defi nition for eom together. Faith confident trust in God 2

3 Many people would say faith is simply believing in God. Believing in Him is a big part of faith, but it s kind of like only seeing a portion of a full picture to only think it means believing God exists. What we re excited to teach you this month is to believe in God so much that you have a trust in Him that nothing can change. The word confident is a very important word for this definition. If you have a confident trust in something, it means you are convinced (without a doubt) in it. Well, there s no one more worthy of our confidence than God. We want you to learn this month to take your trust in God to the highest level it can possibly go. Lets say our definition together one more time right now and then learn a verse from the Bible to help us learn more about Faith. Introduce the Verse of the Month Show the Verse of the Month (VOM) visual. Each month we introduce a new verse of the month. This verse of Scripture, if memorized and stored in your brain, will help you remember to have faith in God no matter what happens to you. You can trust God. The verse of the month for Faith talks about where faith comes from. Let s check it out now! Read the Verse of the Month for the group. So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Romans 10:17 (KJV) Now, let s all say this verse together! Lead the group in saying the verse. Now, if you are wearing the colors blue or red, stand up and say the verse. Allow time for groups to read verse. Good job! Next, anyone who has a birthday from July through December, stand up and say the verse. Nice work! This time, if you have a dog or a cat at home, say the verse. Fantastic! Once more now, everyone read the verse as loudly as possible! Ready? Go! encourage enthusiastic participation by doing so yourself. Kids, reading the Bible and memorizing verses is a powerful way to grow in your knowledge of God and in your faith. The more you know your Bible, the more you will know God. 3 Here s a simple way for you to study God s Word that will help you understand the verses you read and how they apply to your life.

4 Review the method used by elements Kids Worship for understanding what God s Word means and how it can be applied to our lives. What does this verse say? Faith comes from hearing teaching and reports of things that have come from the Word of God, the Bible. What does this verse say to me? If I want to have faith, I must choose to listen to teaching from the Bible. If I want my faith to grow and remain strong, I must daily choose to study, and apply the truths I learn from the Bible. Introduce the Big Idea of the Week Transition from the VOM slide to the Big Idea of the Week slide. Ok kids, now that we ve been introduced to the Element of the Month and the memory verse that goes with it, its time to reveal the Big Idea for the week. This Big Idea is the main point we ll discuss today, and the thing we hope you will be able to tell your parents when they ask what you learned today. Let s get a drum roll going with our hands on our laps. Let the kids do a building drum roll and then announce the Big Idea. Show Big Idea visual. The Big Idea for today is we must choose to live by faith. On the count of 3, lets read it together. Lead the group in reading Big Idea. Our Big Idea uses the word choose. Let s talk about choices together, ok? There are many things in our world every day that we do not get to choose. What are some things in our world that are set a certain way and we don t get to choose them? Allow responses. Provide an example if they don t seem to understand what you re asking. A good example is gravity. We don t get to choose whether or not we participate in gravity. Gravity exists and affects us all the same way. We also cannot choose the weather or what time school starts. Those are good examples. There are a lot of things we don t get to choose. But today our Big Idea is about something we DO get to make a choice about. In fact it is a choice no one can make for us. We choose if we will live by faith or not. Our parents can influence us to live by faith, but your faith will only be your faith if you choose to live it for yourself. Today s Bible lesson is going to give you the information you need to choose faith, or to choose to work on growing your faith. 4 display the Big Idea of the Week during the Big Idea skit.

5 1 the Faith confident trust in God The Big Idea: We must choose to live by faith. 5 At-A-Glance Service Schedule 3-5 minutes Welcome & Prayer minutes Music and Worship 6-8 minutes EOM/VOM 8-10 minutes The Big Idea Skit 3-5 minutes Offering 4-6 minutes The Big Idea Video 3-5 minutes Transition Music minutes Bible Lesson 5-10 minutes Application & Review Optional: Music/Activities to fill time as needed The skit is written to help you teach the big idea for the day and ultimately the month. It requires a minimal amount of props and does not have to be memorized. Make changes to the names, props, and script as you see fit for your program. This skit can be performed by live actors or puppets. Nick and Johnny have a conversation. Johnny: Hey, Nick, I think I know what I am going to do next weekend. You wanna hear about it? Nick: Sure, I can only imagine what you will choose to do. Johnny: I think I am going to jump out of a plane. Nick: With a parachute, I hope. Johnny: Of course. Why would I jump without one? But I am going to do it tandem. You know what that is? Nick: Isn t tandem where someone is strapped to your back and wears the parachute? Johnny: Exactly. It takes too long to get certified to parachute by myself, and I am really interested in doing it right now. So I thought tandem would be the best way. I don t have to get certified because I ll be with a real pro. Nick: Why in the world would you do that, though? I mean, who in their right mind would jump out of a perfectly good airplane? Johnny: I would. Nick: I said in their right mind. Johnny: Hey, not fair! This is something I thought everyone wanted to do. Nick: Not me. I like flying, but not without a plane. Don t you fall at 125 miles per hour, or something like that? That is just way too fast for me. Johnny: Who doesn t love speed? Besides, I hear the view is spectacular. Nick: Do you know anything about the person who will be strapped to you? Johnny: Absolutely nothing. But that s okay. It makes it a double shot of adrenaline. Nick: What do you mean?

6 Johnny: Not only is it a rush falling through the sky and straight toward the ground at 125 miles per hour, but I also will be trusting in someone I will have known for about a half hour. What a rush! Nick:You are crazy. I m never doing that. Johnny: I know it s crazy; that s exactly why I am choosing to put my trust in someone who knows what he is doing. Plus, I get the benefits of floating on the parachute without having to worry about all of the particulars, like controlling the parachute, wind speeds, and all of that technical stuff. Nick: Wait a second; this is going to be great. Johnny, you can use this as a faith lesson. Johnny: Well, yeah! You don t think I thought of that already? Nick: When you come back, you can teach us all about what it was like trusting in someone you had never met and trusting his abilities over your own. Johnny: Absolutely. The best part is I get to choose to do it. I am not being forced, tricked into it, or dared. This is what I want to do. I am choosing to jump, strapped to someone else. Nick: What a great example of choosing to trust! You never cease to surprise me. Great job! Johnny: Thanks, Nick. Now, if you don t mind, I think I ll go do a little research about parachuting tandem. Because besides choosing to trust my instructor, I also choose not to mess this whole thing up and anger him. The end Johnny has been given the exciting opportunity to jump out of a plane, but he must choose to place his trust in someone he has never met to guide him safely to the ground. We must do the same thing when it s time to place our faith in Christ. We may not have met Him or seen Him, but we can place our faith in Him to guide us safely through our lives. The trick is we have to choose Him because He has already chosen us. 6

7 At-A-Glance Service Schedule 3-5 minutes Welcome & Prayer minutes Music and Worship 6-8 minutes EOM/VOM 8-10 minutes The Big Idea Skit 3-5 minutes Offering 4-6 minutes The Big Idea Video 3-5 minutes Transition Music minutes Bible Lesson 5-10 minutes Application & Review Optional: Music/Activities to fill time as needed Offering Use some light music during the offering time. We want to encourage you to begin giving your kid s offerings to a specific project they can learn about and buy into. The church as a whole has missionaries and other outside ministries the adult service offerings benefit. Having a project or ministry for your kids to support as a kid s church can be a very powerful way to help kids learn how tithing and giving can make a huge difference for the Lord. It also will get them used to the concept of giving to the Lord a portion of what they receive as tithes and offerings to the God who gives them so much. If you already have been giving toward a project, you can give a report of how much they have given, how their money is being used effectively or a testimony from the project that you have been giving the money to. Anything you can do to help them relate what they are giving to will help generate excitement and a powerful connection. The Big Idea Video Transition Song: Choose a song that brings the energy level down and prepares children to explore God s Word. Tech note For convenience, the Big Idea videos are provided within the slideshows linked to a slide for that part of the lesson. In order for the video to play properly, the PowerPoint and video files must remain in the same folder. They can be moved from one computer to another. However, if you move the PowerPoint to another computer, please move the entire folder, which contains both PowerPoint and video files. Otherwise the link will be broken and the video will not play as a part of the PowerPoint. The video can still be used apart from the PowerPoint slideshow if separated. 7

8 1 Bible Lesson Faith confident trust in God At-A-Glance Service Schedule 3-5 minutes Welcome & Prayer minutes Music and Worship 6-8 minutes EOM/VOM The Big Idea: We must choose to live by faith. Connect with God s Word I am really looking forward to our time together this month learning about faith. At the end of this month, you will have learned about another building block to help you become a champion for God. Some of you may be wondering what I mean by that phrase, so let me explain minutes The Big Idea Skit 3-5 minutes Offering 4-6 minutes The Big Idea Video 3-5 minutes Transition Music minutes Bible Lesson 5-10 minutes Application & Review Optional: Music/Activities to fill time as needed Scripture Text: hebrews 11:1 hebrews 11:2-22 A champion for God is someone who loves God and His Word, the Bible. It s someone who obeys what God s Word says, and helps others learn about God and His Word. I want to be a champion for God. How about you? Allow for responses. I am so proud of your desire to learn how to be a champion for the Lord. Learning the importance of faith this month will definitely help you work toward making that goal a reality. We should begin with our Big Idea of the Week. Let s look at it again right now! Show the Big Idea visual. We must choose to live by faith. As we discussed a few minutes ago, we make choices all the time. We talked about choices we get to make and made a list of things we don t get to choose. We are focusing today on a choice only we can make as individuals for ourselves. We make choices from the moment we get up until we choose to go to sleep. Some of these choices are super simple and really don t make that big of a difference to the direction of our lives, while other choices can make all the difference in the world. One of the choices that seems so simple yet has a powerful effect is the choice to brush our teeth. Raise your hands if you ve brushed your teeth since Christmas! Keep one hand up if you ve brushed your teeth this month. Nice! Now keep one finger in the air if you brushed your teeth this morning. Whew! There are a lot more people who brushed their teeth this morning than I thought there would be. Good job!

9 Let me ask you a question. Is it difficult to brush your teeth? Allow responses. No, it s not that difficult. What happens if you never brush your teeth? Allow responses. Correct! If we refuse to take care of our teeth by brushing them, they will begin to decay and eventually will rot and fall out. I need to pick out some volunteers to help brush some teeth today. Select four volunteers and have two blindfolds, cheap swim goggles, towels or aprons, toothbrushes, travel size kid toothpaste, small table and chairs for volunteers to sit. Of the four volunteers, pick two to be brushers and two to be brushees. Seat the volunteers who will have their teeth brushed, wrap a towel or apron around them, and blindfold the ones doing the brushing. Explain that on the signal, the blindfolded brushers will pick up the toothbrush, apply the toothpaste, and proceed to the volunteers who are seated with goggles over their eyes. The time for this event should be about minute. The brushers have to try to brush the teeth of the volunteers effectively. This will be difficult with the blindfolds! Take pictures! At the end of the round, let the audience say who brushed the best. Following the game, restore order and send everyone back to his or her chair. Did you have fun with this game? Encourage response. The act of teeth brushing got a little more difficult and lot more funny. Am I right? Allow responses. Even though this game was entertaining to watch and maybe just a little embarrassing for the players, it does help us understand about making choices. Our players got to work on a simple choice we make each day that can have a big effect on us if we fail to make it. Hopefully tomorrow morning will not include someone blindfolded trying to brush my teeth or yours, but I hope you will brush your own teeth. Your parents have taught you to brush your teeth, but some times you don t do it. They showed you what to do and talked to you about the importance of doing it, but unless you re a preschooler, your parents probably don t brush your teeth for you, right? They leave you to make the choice they ve taught you is important. You get to choose. 9 Being able to make your own choices is cool. It s something most people like to do. But there are often situations in life where we don t get to make choices. Think back to our discussion earlier when we introduced the Big

10 Idea for today. Revisit some of the items from the group discussion. Here s one more example before we get into the Bible. We can t choose to make the speed limit on the highway 200 miles per hour. The government is the one who determines the speed limit. We can choose if we will obey what the government selects though. (But we don t get to choose the consequences.) Refer to the Big Idea again. Today s Big Idea mentions something we do have a choice about. The Big Idea says we must choose to live by faith. In other words, the choice is ours. Will we believe God s promises or not? Will we trust His word or not? The answer to the question is totally up to each individual person. Our actions will reflect our faith. This is definitely a situation that requires a personal decision. Nobody else can make it for you. By the end of today s lesson, it is our prayer that you will choose to live by faith in God and in His Word. To help you make this choice, we are going to spend time today learning exactly what faith is. If you were in school and your teacher asked for a definition of faith, what would you say? Allow kids to respond. Faith can be a pretty hard thing to describe. It s often one of those ideas you understand but can t put into the right words. Learn and Explore God s Word Well, I m going to try to help you with that and give you some instruction about what faith is and how to describe it. Our definition says faith is a confident trust in God. Let s study it further and see what the Bible says about faith? Let s all open our Bibles and turn to Hebrews 11. Make sure to provide ample time and assistance for kids to locate the book of Hebrews in their Bibles. Hebrews is located in the New Testament and is a great book written to encourage people to follow Jesus as the promised Savior everyone had been looking for before that time. 10 The book of Hebrews is also for you and me. It contains a lot of encouraging truths about Jesus and having faith in Him. Hebrews 11 is often referred to as the hall of faith chapter because it contains a list of people who trusted in God and had great faith. That chapter is very encouraging

11 to me, and I believe it will be for you, too. The people listed in this chapter were just regular people, like you and me, who were used by a loving God to do amazing things in their lives. God wants to use each of you to do something amazing in our world. Do you want to be a part of the amazing future God has for you? Allow for responses. Of course you do. I do too. Let s look at the first verse in this chapter, Hebrews 11:1. Read Hebrews 11:1. The writer of Hebrews described faith as something like confidence. Confidence is a strong belief in something or someone. For example, most of you are confident that when you wake up tomorrow it will be daytime, right? We have a strong belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, even though it hasn t done so yet by the time we go to bed. Faith is having confidence, or a strong belief in something that you cannot see with your eyes, or touch with your hands. We who have faith in God believe in His Word the Bible and the events it tells us about, even though we weren t there to see them for ourselves. It is because of faith, and our belief in the things God has shown us in the Bible that we have faith in God for the things that have not taken place yet. Faith is what helps us know that one day Jesus will return to the earth and take us to live in Heaven with Him. There is nothing in the natural world to prove it, but faith gives us a strong belief or confidence that Heaven is real. Faith in God becomes the foundation upon which all of our life is built. Having faith in Him is what makes life worth living. Because of our belief in God and our future home in Heaven, we can put up with a lot of stuff that really hurts. For example, let me ask you a question about something sad. Have any of you ever experienced the death of a family member or friend? When a loved one dies, we have sadness because we miss the person and because of how abruptly his or her life ended. However, if you know that the loved one was a Christian, and you yourself are a Christian, your faith gives you a strong belief that certain things are true: 11

12 Your loved one is in Heaven with God and no longer sick or in any pain. You will also go to live in Heaven someday because of your own relationship with God. You will see your loved one again and spend forever together in Heaven. People without faith in God don t have these things to look forward to. Therefore the way they deal with the death of a loved one is very, very different, and the sadness and grief they feel may never come to an end. That s the reason I make the statement that faith makes life worth living. We know, through faith, that our time here is just a short stop we re making on our way to living forever with God in Heaven. When you live by faith in God, you follow Him more consistently and help others see Him too. We really need to choose to live by faith in God as the foundation for the way we will live our lives. It makes all the difference in the world. Living by faith definitely made the difference in the lives of the people listed throughout Hebrews 11. In verse 4, we are told about Abel, who made a great sacrifice to God from his very best possessions based on his faith in God as his provider. In verse 7 we are reminded of Noah, who spent 100 years building an ark in advance of the Flood. Remember, there had never been a flood before, but Noah believed God and had faith in His plan to save him and his family. In verse 8, we re reminded of Abraham, who heard God telling him to move to a totally new land that he had never been to. Abraham packed up and moved because he had faith in God s plan for him. In verse 22, we learn that Joseph talked to his family and friends about the departure of the people of Israel to return to the Promised Land, even though this wouldn t happen for 400 years! He had faith in God s plan for his family and His promise to make Israel into a great nation. 12 We could spend the next year talking about true stories of the people in the Bible who chose to live by faith as the guiding force in their lives. They based their decisions in very serious situations on their trust and faith in God.

13 Apply and respond to God s word The true stories of people like this and many, many more is why the first lesson for the Element of Faith is about our need to choose to live by faith. Haven t you heard enough about what faith really is and the people who chose to live by faith that you are ready to do so yourself? Are you ready to live a life of faith in God? We talked earlier about faith being the very foundation of our lives. Do you have faith in God as your foundation, or are you placing your trust in something else like your parents, your church, and your country? There may be some of you here today who have never really stopped to think about faith in this way. Maybe you have heard the word faith and never really understood what it meant. Today we have taught you what faith is and why you should choose it. If you would like to begin a life based on faith in God, it s really very simple. As a Christian, it s just as simple as asking God to help you grow in faith each day as you follow Jesus and read His Word, the Bible. If you ve never become a Christian, it s as easy as A, B, C to become a Christian and a child of God. First, Admit you are a sinner and ask God for forgiveness of those sins. Second, Believe that God loves you enough to do just that. Have faith that His love for you is true. Third, Choose to follow Jesus by telling Him you want to live a life of faith starting today. Close your time in prayer, giving a simple prayer for kids to pray to receive Christ, or if possible, invite kids who want to become Christians to meet trained leaders who will help them commit their lives to the Lord Jesus. Use the Elements To Go page as a tool to help parents connect with and continue teaching this lesson. An additional Elements To Go page has been provided to allow your church the option to customize by adding your church logo if desired. Elements Kids Worship is published monthly by Randall house, 114 Bush Road, Nashville, Tennessee Copyright 2017 Randall house, Nashville, Tennessee. (800) / All Rights Reserved. No reproduction permitted without permission under penalty of law. Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are from the King James Version of the holy Bible. 13

14 Faith confident trust in God. Talk about it: Provide two options to choose from for a variety of categories (food, restaurant, color, store, book, etc.) and encourage family members to choose which they like the best. Allow them to suggest additional categories. Then remind them of today s Big Idea and discuss it together. Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (KJV) What s The Big Idea? We must choose to live by faith. Faith (week 1) Faith confident trust in God. Talk about it: Provide two options to choose from for a variety of categories (food, restaurant, color, store, book, etc.) and encourage family members to choose which they like the best. Allow them to suggest additional categories. Then remind them of today s Big Idea and discuss it together. Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (KJV) What s The Big Idea? We must choose to live by faith. Faith (week 1)

15 Speaker s Name Date Scripture Passage Topic What does this say? What does this say to me? Speaker s Name Date Scripture Passage Topic What does this say? What does this say to me?