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Series at a Glance for Elevate ABOUT THIS SERIES God wants us to follow Him every day, but there are a lot of things in our world that try to pull us away from Him and His best for us. So how can we protect ourselves and keep God as our focus? We can put on the full Armor of God! God gives all believers special armor to wear that will help us live our lives for Him, but we have to make the choice to put the armor on. During this series, we are going to learn about the Armor of God and hear how we can use the Armor in our lives every single day. We hope you will join us! MEMORY VERSE Ephesians 6:13 - So put on all of God s armor. Evil days will come. But you will be able to stand up to anything. And after you have done everything you can, you will still be standing. WEEKLY OVERVIEW Lesson Topic Big Idea Lesson 1 May 21/22 Belt of Truth 1 Kings 3:9 We can learn right from wrong by reading the Bible. Lesson 2 May 28/29 Breastplate of Righteousness Matthew 4 We can make wise choices by spending time with God. Lesson 3 June 4/5 Shoes of Peace Acts 8 We can help others know peace. Lesson 4 June 11/12 Shield of Faith Judges 7:2 We can have faith in God no matter what. Lesson 5 June 18/19 Helmet of Salvation John 21:15-17 We can know Jesus as our Savior. Sword of the Spirit 1 Kings 18 We can trust the Bible to guide our lives. 2
May 21/22 Belt of Truth Series at a Glance for Elevate (cont.) To kick off this series, we are learning about the Belt of Truth. The Belt of Truth can help you learn right from wrong and know the difference between truth and lies. We are lost without God s truth, so put on the Belt of Truth today! May 28/29 Breastplate of Righteousness This weekend, we re learning about the Breastplate of Righteousness. On our own, we are not able to stand firm against the many temptations that come our way, but when we wear the Breastplate of Righteousness that Jesus gives us, we can make the wise choice when things don t go our way because we have spent time learning how God wants us to live. June 4/5 Shoes of Peace God gives His followers special coverings which we call the Shoes of Peace. They provide calm when times get tough, but these special shoes are also for holding our ground by telling people about Jesus as well as inviting others to church. We will learn this four-word question: Wanna come to church? June 11/12 Shield of Faith An important piece of armor to defend against an enemy is a shield. As believers, God gives us the Shield of Faith to use each and every day. Trusting in God and believing in His Son, Jesus, can give us strength no matter what is thrown our way! June 18/19 Helmet of Salvation All of us have an opportunity to wear the Helmet of Salvation because of what Jesus did on the cross. With the Helmet of Salvation secured tightly on our heads, we can know our identity is found in Jesus. So put on your Helmet today! June 24/26 Sword of the Spirit As we close this series, we ll learn about the importance of using the Sword of the Spirit. The Sword of the Spirit is God s book for us the Bible. We can trust that the words and stories we read in the Bible are true, so use this Sword to guide your way! 3
What You Need to DO and KNOW Each Week Opening Do This: Encourage everyone to gather near the stage, and have FUN! Give high-fives, welcome the kids by name, dance to the music, and let kids know we re going to have fun today! Interact with the crowd! Create a buzz about what is going to happen. Know This: This is intended to be a fun time! You as the leader need to set that standard so kids can feel comfortable. If you re not willing to open up and be silly, they won t either. It s ok if some kids are shy or stand-offish, but YOU should model what we d like to see! Welcome Do This: Greet the kids with enthusiasm without being overwhelming. Know This: During this time you are working to gain the kids trust. Something as simple as telling them what is going to happen during the hour can help relieve some anxiety that they may have. We will also gain their trust by showing them that this is a place that is not weird or different from what they see in other places. Worship Do This: Perform the provided actions to the songs and demonstrate enthusiastic worship for kids. Encourage kids to join in, but don t force them to participate. Read aloud any verses that are on the screen (unless the song features a voice over). Direct the kids attention towards God. Call out upcoming lyrics when appropriate and help the kids engage in singing. Know This: It s okay if some kids don t sing or do actions to the songs. They may worship by just reflecting on the lyrics and listening. Our music set is generally made of high-energy songs to help kids get engaged in worship. Media Do This: Sit or stand to the side of the screen (s). Watch the media and appear engaged with appropriate non-verbals. Know This: Although this is a good time to catch your breath and gather your thoughts, you are still technically on. Kids may be looking at you to see if you are watching the videos, and if you don t look engaged, they may not choose to engage either. Prayer Do This: Ask the kids to be respectful and quiet; you will pray out loud, while they pray quietly in their hearts and heads. Sit or crouch down and engage the kids as you pray. Know This: We want the kids to learn how to pray by seeing you model this. Feel free to say your own prayer this one is simply a suggestion. Bible Verses & Memory Verse Do This: Read any verses from the side screen aloud. Make the memory verse fun! After you ve read it, do something silly like challenge the boys to be louder than the girls, jump up and down, add actions, or have the kids recite the verse using different voices. 4
GEAR UP! Lesson Outline for Elevate : Lesson Segment Total Running Time Opening Song (2:00) Welcome (3:00) Worship (11:00) 0:00-16:00 Bumper Video (1:00) Lesson Intro (6:00) Booger Remix: Part 1 (4:00) Share Your Story (3:00) Memory Verse (4:00) Booger Remix: Part 2 (4:00) Message (9:00) Wrap Up (3:00) 11:00-49:00 Game Time (11:00) 49:00-60:00 Video Cue Slide Cue Audio Cue Tech Notes 5
Opening Song 2:00 (Roll when directed) Elevate Opener Hey everybody! It s time to get started, so please clean up your areas, turn off the games, and if you have popcorn, throw it away. Then come on over and join me by the stage! If you are ready to have some fun today, give your neighbor a high-five. I know I m ready for some fun! Do This: Go into the audience and give high-fives. (Auto advance) Elevate Slide and Underscore Welcome 3:00 Welcome to Elevate everyone! You can go ahead and take a seat. My name is, and it is awesome to see you here today. Today is going to be a great day! We like to do some singing, which we call Worship, and we are going to learn some new things together, and have a lot of fun doing it. Let s start answering a question from our pal, Booger. Check out the side screens. Would You Rather (Auto advance) Booger Question Slide Do This: Emcee as the kids are sharing their answers. If time allows, you can ask a couple of kids to share their examples with the larger group. 6
! Worship 5:00 Do This: If the worship team did not do the welcome, the teacher should invite them to the stage at this time. Worship Slide We are going to spend some time together worshipping God. Worshipping God by singing is just one of the ways we can show how much we love Him. Why do we take time to worship God? Check out this verse that comes from the Bible: All you people of the Earth, sing to the Lord. Day after day tell about how he saves us. Tell the nations about his glory. Tell all the people about the wonderful things he has done. 1 Chronicles 16:23-24 You see, God has done so many things! This verse talks about how awesome God is and how we need to tell everyone about God because he has done so many great things for us. We worship God because he deserves our time. One of the ways we are going to worship God right now is through singing. So if you know this song, please sing along. If you don t, that s okay too! But let s all stand up on our feet and just like this verse says, we will let it be known how awesome God is! Song 1: Let It Be Known (Auto advance) Worship Slide That was great everyone! That song is a great way to do exactly what that Bible verse talked about. We sang out loud how great God is! Way to go. We are going to sing one more song that may not be as loud as the first one, but celebrates just how incredible our God is. Song 2: Our God 7
! (Auto advance) Worship Slide That was awesome everyone. I love that we can sing about how great our God is and how big our God is. Thank you for singing with me. We will wrap up our worship time in prayer, which is when we talk to God. So please remain standing as we pray. Dear God, thank you for loving us so much. Thank you for this time to sing to you and learn more about you. We love you! Amen. Lesson Intro 2:00 Do This: During the bumper video, the teacher comes on stage as the worship team leaves. Bumper Video (Auto advance) GEAR UP! Hey everybody! My name is and I am so excited you are here today! We are in our fifth week of a series called and we are taking about how we all need to Gear Up with the Armor of God! We have been talking about the idea that at some point, you may have seen a cartoon or movie that had a knight in shining armor with a castle in the background. Well, back in Bible times, they actually put on similar gear as a knight would. But instead of calling someone who wore this gear a knight, he or she would most likely be called a soldier. These soldiers would wear protective covering so they wouldn t get hurt. Picture of soldier 8
Check that out! These soldiers had some pretty cool gear don t you think? They had a helmet to protect their head. That huge piece across their chest is called a breastplate. That must be heavy! And then they had shield and sword. If you look at the belt, it actually held the sheath where the sword was placed. As you can see, they would wear boots or shoes that actually had spikes on them too. We don t wear this kind of gear anymore, but in Bible times, they would see this gear a lot. When the Bible tells us about the Armor of God, it made a lot of sense to the people reading about it. Let s check out the gear we have learned about so far! Do This: Have a skirted table with the construction belt, catchers chest protector, soccer cleats, firefighter jacket, and football helmet on top. You may reference these as you do the recap. Belt of Truth/Booger version We started out learning about the Belt of Truth, which is actually how we can learn right and wrong and truth and lies by reading the Bible and applying truth to our lives. Breastplate of Righteousness/Booger Version Then we talked about the Breastplate of Righteousness. We learned that righteousness means right living. We talked about how a pitcher throws a curveball and we also learned that the phrase, Life threw me a curveball, which can be when something happens that we weren t planning. We wear this gear when we spend time getting to know God better which can help us make wise choices no matter what comes our way. Shoes of Peace/Booger Version After that, we learned about the Shoes of Peace and how we can not only stand our ground for Jesus, but that we should be inviting people to church! Did anyone remember to use that four word sentence? Does anyone remember what it was? Wanna come to church? 9
It was Wanna come to church? That s great! So once again welcome if this is your first time to Elevate, we really are excited you are here. Shield of Faith/Booger Version After that, we learned about the Shield of Faith and how we can Trust God no matter what. Helmet of Salvation/Booger Version Last week, we learned about the Helmet of Salvation and how when Jesus is our Leader, we know who we truly are. We learned that salvation is being saved from all the bad things we have done which is called sin, and how Jesus saved us from the bad things we have done. So when we make him our leader, we have our identity in Jesus. We have been talking about armor and how we aren't actually putting on REAL armor through this series. And we have been using these different ideas of sports figures and firefighters to help us understand the gear we are learning about. Remember that in Bible times, talking about a soldier would have made a ton of sense to the people that heard the message. This week, we are looking at the last piece of gear that the Bible mentions in the Armor of God, or God s armor. It is the Sword of the Spirit. If you look at all of the pieces of gear mentioned, the sword is the only offensive weapon. The sword is really best at attacking. Picture of Hockey Player A hockey player has a lot of similar gear to that of a solider. They have hockey skates instead of footwear or cleats. They wear padding around their waist which is a lot like the belt we have talked about. They wear shoulder pads and even a helmet. A hockey player doesn t use a sword, but the hockey stick works in a similar way as a sword! Do This: Go back to skirted table and reveal hockey stick from beneath and place them beside other gear on table. 10
A hockey stick is best at attacking, or shooting on net. You have to know how to use it by practicing and getting familiar with how it feels and how to handle it. Hockey players spend hours and hours practicing, shooting, and skating around getting familiar with their hockey sticks. It is not used for defense, it is used for offense. It is used to attack or move forward, not protect. If I told you there is a simple thing you can do every day that would help you avoid getting into trouble, would you believe me? If I told you that this simple thing could help you have less frustration in your life and get less consequences, would you be interested to know what it was? If I told you this simple thing took just a few minutes a day and you would have more wise answers so that you would have more time playing with your toys or games and less time in trouble, would you want to know more? That is exactly what we will be talking about today! Video One 4:00 We ll learn that simple thing soon, but first, let s catch up with Booger and Lindsey. Booger Video, Pt. 1 Share Your Story 2:00 (Auto advance) GEAR UP! I hope that Booger and Lindsey take time to learn more about the Sword of the Spirit. It s a good thing that sword was only made of foam. It looked like learning about a sword could hurt if you were around Booger and Lindsey. Have you ever been in a tough situation? Maybe your friends gave you a cheat sheet to help you cheat on a test and you were having a tough time knowing what to do? 11
Maybe some of your friends are not nice to a kid in school and you didn t join them but you also didn't stop them. Maybe you didn t know what the best choice was. I remember when Do This: Share a 2-minute appropriate, relevant personal story about a time you were in a situation that the Bible helped guide you on the wise choice. Tell the kids what verse helped and why. I am so thankful that I read my Bible because I was able to make the wise choice for my situation. I want to make wise choices so I don t hurt myself or others, and I am thankful the Bible helped make that clear to me. Memory Verse 4:00 Each series we learn a new memory verse. Over the last few weeks we have been sharing Bible facts and hopefully you have learned some new things. Today before we practice our memory verse I want to tell you about a book in the Bible called Proverbs. Proverbs is writings about wisdom and how to have wisdom and what to do with wisdom. There are 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs. If you ever want to start reading the Bible or want to try reading the Bible, you could open up to Proverbs and read a chapter a day for a month! Cool, huh? Let s get to our memory verse now. (Memory Verse) Ephesians 6:13 So put on all of God s armor. Evil days will come. But you will be able to stand up to anything. And after you have done everything you can, you will still be standing. We are going to read that together one more time, but instead of reading it, let s yell it as loud as we can. Ready, set, go! Do This: Let the girls yell, then let the boys yell for a turn. That really was great yelling. What does this verse mean? We have already mentioned that we will not actually be putting on or wearing any physical armor. But when the Bible talks about the Armor of God, or God s Armor, we are talking about ways that we can learn from the Bible so that we know how to have the life the best way possible. This verse tells us that evil days will come. I bet every single one of us have probably 12
had really bad days. Like the kind of day you don't want to think about and pray never happens again. Maybe you have felt so weak you did not have the energy to walk. But this verse gives us encouragement to be strong and stay standing when those really bad days come. Now, the Bible verse is not saying that we can stand up to anything like a bulldozer or something like that. But this verse is saying we can face anything that happens to us in life. It also tells us that we can really remember what the Bible has to say when we face those days. Video 2 5:00 Let s catch up with Booger and Lindsey and see if they figured out how to use a sword without hurting anyone or anything! Booger Remix, Pt. 2 Message 6:00 (Auto advance) GEAR UP! That was great how Booger and Lindsey figured out how to gear up with the Armor of God. I love how they used all the pieces of gear to get through that obstacle course. Just to be clear, we are not giving out swords or anything today. As we have been learning more about the Armor of God, most of the pieces we have talked about are for protection. We have heard about protecting the feet and chest. The helmet projects the head, and the shield is another piece of gear to protect the body. The sword is different. It is a soldier s main way to attack. The sword is a weapon that is kept close. If you didn t know how to use it, you could get into a lot of trouble or even hurt yourself. You couldn t use a sword from a distance like a bow and arrow. So when a sword was drawn, it means the enemy is close. You really need to know what you are doing when you have sword in your hand. 13
The idea of a sword makes a lot of sense to the people when they were reading it during Bible times. In a similar way, a hockey player needs to know how to use his hockey stick. If they don t take the time getting used to the feel and flow of the stick, they will miss scoring. If they aren t quick with using the hockey stick, they will miss shots on net. And if they aren t taking time to become familiar with their gear, they will not be effective in the game. Just like a sword, and just like a hockey stick, when we are talking about the Sword of the Spirit, we are talking about learning and memorizing the Bible and spending time with God and getting to know him. I told you that there was a simple thing that you could do that would help you in a huge way and it only took a few minutes. If you haven t guessed what that is yet, here you go: Learn the Bible! Learn the Bible! That s right. If you took five minutes a day to study the Bible and memorize the Bible verses, you would know how to live the life God wants you to because you were spending time learning how to have a great life. You might be able to avoid getting in trouble because you learned how to control yourself better. Let s say you get angry a lot. Maybe something happened in your life that you don t like, but you get frustrated and yell at people and it seems to come from nowhere. If that is you, friends have probably been frustrated with you. But then let s say you have been taking time reading the Bible and memorizing verses. Maybe you know the verse from James 1:19 which reads: Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. James 1:19 If you were to study and memorize that verse, you would understand that you should be quick to listen because you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. This verse might help you remember to slow down before you react in anger and get yourself in 14
trouble too. When we learn verses like this and apply it to our lives, it is one way that we can get to use the Sword of the Spirit. Our Bible story talks about a man that took time to get to know God. Today, we will learn about Elijah. When you read the whole story of Elijah, it is like he and God are best friends. The story of Elijah is outstanding. This is just one of the awesome Bible stories you can read! Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago, even before Jesus was born, there was a man named Elijah. Elijah was a human just like you and I. He loved God and spent a lot of time talking to God. Our story begins at a time where the people that Elijah was with had forgotten to only worship God. They started worshipping Baal [bale]. Baal was not the true God. The people would make up gold statues that looked a little like people or sometimes animals and worship them. They would pray to these statues and they would take time to talk to these statues. Baal was not real. But some of the people of that time prayed to Baal like he was real. Besides the fact that these people prayed to Baal, they had a serious problem. There had been no rain for a long time. When there is no rain, then their crops, their food, do not get water. Can you imagine how well corn on the cob grows without any kind of water? They didn t have sprinkler systems or hoses to get the soil wet. So a lot of the food died. This caused a lot of problems. It really hurt their food supply. Some people prayed to Baal for rain. And some people prayed to our God for rain. This really bothered Elijah. He loved God so much that it really made him sad that people would pray to something that was not our true God. In fact, he gathered many people together and said this: How long will it take you to make up your minds? If the Lord is the one and only God, follow him. But if Baal is the one and only God, follow him. 1 Kings 18:21 Elijah was frustrated that the people had forgotten all the things that God had done as a promise to them. So Elijah basically called a challenge out! He told the people that there was going to be an ultimate showdown between Baal and God. Whoever won the 15
showdown was the real ultimate God. Once and for all the people would have to make a decision on who was the real God. Elijah had all of the prophets, or followers, of Baal meet him. There were 450 of them! Then he had two bulls brought to the showdown and Elijah made an altar, or special table, to God and then the 450 followers of Baal made an altar, or special table, to Baal. Elijah said the rules were simple. They would make an altar and pray. Whomever answered their prayer and sent fire down would prove that they were the one true real God. The Baal people prepared their bull, made their altar and began to pray to Baal. They prayed and they prayed, but no answer. These people danced and went wild and yelled and cried out to Baal, but no answer. After a long time, Elijah actually said this: Do This: Read this next verse from the Kids Quest Bible, page 440. Perhaps Baal has too much to think about. Or maybe he has gone to the toilet. Or perhaps he is away on a trip. Maybe he s sleeping. 1 Kings 18:27 Elijah actually told these people that maybe Baal was on the toilet! You can t make this up! This is actually in the Bible! You should really read the Bible. Despite what the followers of Baal did, nothing happened. Now it was Elijah s turn to call on God. Before he did that, he did something unique. He placed 12 stones around the bull and altar. He had four large jars of water filled up and poured onto the wood. Does anyone know what happens if you put water on wood before a fire? It won t start the fire. This didn t make a lot of sense, but Elijah wanted to prove to the people just how powerful God is. So he had those four jars filled up and poured out on the wood again. Then he had the four jars filled up and poured out a third time! The wood and everything around it was absolutely soaked! This would make the fire difficult to light in any situation! But we know that what might seem impossible to us is not impossible to God! Elijah prayed to God. He asked that God s power would come down to prove to the people who is the ultimate God. Immediately, fire came down and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, and the soil. God didn t just light a fire. He burned the whole place down! God showed how incredibly powerful and awesome He is! 16
All the people saw this and cried out that The Lord is the one and only true God. Elijah s showdown worked. God saved the day and his people went back to worshipping him. Elijah knew God because he spent time with him. We can spend time with God by reading the Bible and getting to know the Bible. We can become even more familiar with the Bible when we take time to memorize verses from the Bible. When we take time to get to know God we are gearing up with the Sword of the Spirit. Elijah knew God and trusted the words and stories about God and let them guide his life. We can trust the words and stories in the Bible and let it guide us in our lives. Wrap Up 2:00 If you remember anything as we leave today, I want you to remember that We can trust the Bible to guide our lives. Let s pretend for a moment that you don't remember things well. Don't worry, we have you covered! Let me tell you about THREE things that you will NOT want to forget on your way out. Do This: Hold up the Armor Card, the Family Connection Card, and the Reading Plan bookmark. Sometimes your parents ask, What did you learn today? You can show them this Family Connection Card and could even read the Bible story together. Maybe you could work on your memory verse as well! This is a great way to remember what we learned during this Gear Up series. One of the reasons you will want the Family Connection Card is to know how to win the photo contest! As we are learning about the Armor of God, we want to see how YOU would gear up in the Armor of God. Use the Family Connection Card to learn or remember what the gear is, and then make up your own kind of Armor. Then, have your parents or guardian take a picture and put it on social media. If you don t know what that is, show them the back of this Card so they can read all about it and use the 17
hashtag #ebcgearup. We will have prizes for the best Armor! Can t wait to see how creative you will be. This Armor Card is pretty awesome. This week we learned about the Sword of the Spirit. This card is the last card and only shows us the Sword of Spirit. If you are missing a week, we have some extras just over to complete your set. There are six cards in all, so make sure you get the whole set! The last thing I want to show you is this reading plan. Remember that Lindsey and Booger mentioned reading the Bible more? Here is the actual reading plan that Lindsey was talking about! Each day, you can read the verses and chapters from the Bible. This is a great way to explore and get to know the Bible and the stories in it. Don t forget to take this on your way out too! Game Time 10:00 We sure had a lot of fun through this Armor of God series! We learned how to Gear Up and be able to have the best life possible. To end this series, let s have some fun! We talked about the Sword of the Spirit today. With that, we used a hockey stick to help us understand the idea that a player needs to practice and become familiar with the stick, which is like the same way we need to become familiar with the Bible and how to use it. Hockey players do many drills to help them skate faster and longer, as well as shoot better. This game isn t necessarily for hockey players, but it is a ton of fun! Moving Up Game Music We will need 10 players to come up on stage. The game is pretty straightforward. We have a stack of 25 red cups and at the top of the stack is a blue cup. Your goal is to take the cups out from the bottom of the stack, one-by-one, and place it on top of the stack. 18
As you do that, the blue cup gets closer to the bottom of the stack. The first one to get to their blue cup wins! Do This: Select 10 kids of your choice. Can be random. Can be boys vs. girls. You can adjust the number of cups if you need to. The game should move fairly quickly, so you should have time to cycle through several games. Know This: If you have extra time, you could play extra rounds. That was fantastic everyone! Great job. Let s end with prayer, so would you all please have a seat and then we will talk to God! Dear God, thank you so much for today. Thank you for loving us and giving us this Armor that can help us live the best life possible. We love you so much. Amen. Do This: Dismiss however you like best. Know This: If you get done a little early, you could dismiss to games Elevate 19