RENEW OUR WORLD CHILDREN'S TALK (Suitable for 7-12 year olds, but may be adapted for other age groups). Each slide comes with accompanying text or related activities to share with the children. All text in grey is there to provide guidance for the teacher or to suggest additional information. PROPS NEEDED Cards with re words on them for the game Solar lights or wind up torches Ability to show the Renew Our World film and the PowerPoint which you can download on our resources page (www.tearfund.org/action) Letter to the government - there are a number of different ways to do this - see letter activity section. GAME TO INTRODUCE RE WORDS Slide 1 Write some of the following words on to reasonably sized cards (choose words that children will understand depending on the ages in your group): rebuild, repair, rewrite, remove, retell, repay, refresh, rewind, reheat, repeat, refill, relight, recharge, reuse, revisit, renew, react, replay, reflect, return, remember, recycle, reverse. Volunteers in the group are given one of these words on a card and have to describe the word without using the word itself. They can also use actions. The group has to guess the word. When they ve guessed, stick the word up in front of the children. Repeat this a number of times, depending on how much time you have. Ask: What is the similarity? Hopefully children will point out that all the words start with re. Does anyone know what the re at the beginning of each word means? twitter @TearfundAct
Slide 2 Explain that re is a prefix. Children might have learnt about this in school The prefix re means again and again, or back to. Ask children to listen, during the next two slides, for any time they hear a 're' word. When they do, they should put their hand up (if you think this action will detract then you can leave this out, but it might be a good way for you to stop at these points to explain any words that the children might need help with). God uses quite a few re words in the Bible because he is very patient with us and is willing to help us do things over and over again, repeating the lessons lovingly until we understand. The Bible is the story of God s dealings with human beings. Right at the start of the Bible is the story of how God created a beautiful world, which he wanted to enjoy with us, where everyone could have what they needed to live well. Slide 3 People were meant to be in good relationships: with God, with themselves, with other humans and with creation. However, very quickly people rejected God s ways and messed things up and walked away from God. The beautiful world became broken. God longs for us to return to him. The Bible tells the story of what God is doing to restore and rebuild relationships with us. He wants to renew the earth where we have damaged it with selfish actions. Slide 4 There is a special word for mending relationships, it s reconcile. It s a bit of an unusual word, not used in everyday English, but it s really important and precious - Jesus came to reconcile us to God, to mend the broken relationship between each of us and God. Then, as we are following Jesus and growing more like him, we can also be reconcilers of other broken relationships. The church, as God s people, is also called to help restore, rebuild and renew relationships that are damaged. Slide 5 If you have time you could tell the children this example of a church that is helping restore/reconcile relationships to reflect God s intended design. Salem Baptist Church in South Wales is a great example of God s people acting to be reconcilers and menders of relationships. The church congregation felt that God was asking them to bless people in their community using food. At the same time, staff at a local supermarket were looking for a charity to partner with so they could pass on food that would otherwise be wasted. Members of Salem Baptist Church contacted the supermarket and are now given food each week to share with people in need in the community. Church members have set up a lunch club for people to come together and eat, as well as sharing food with families through parent and baby groups, the youth group and the local school. Meanwhile, a church cookbook is raising money for community projects, whilst church members are looking at ways to set up a cookery club for local people. Through their activities, members of the church have built excellent relationships with staff at the supermarket who helped paint the church kitchen and raised money to give the church a freezer. So many relationships strengthened, mended and grown through one church. (The story is here, for background reading). Ask: What does your church do that restores, rebuilds or renews relationships? (Expand the sentence to explain, as necessary, for the age of children you have. Suggest that this could include anything your church is doing to reach out to the community, help those living in poverty, or care for the environment. You can also talk about how Sunday meetings are helping us to deepen our relationship with God). Watch the Renew Our World film with the children. These verses put it more succinctly: 'This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.' (2 Corinthians 5:17-19, NLT) RENEW OUR WORLD FILM
Slide 6 In this film the presenters describe some of the ways the world is broken. They show us that some people don t have enough to live well, like Sylvia and her family. They also explain a bit about climate change and the ways that the earth has been damaged by our actions. You may have learnt about this in school. (If you have time you can ask the children to give some input here). But there are ways we can renew our world. And God wants us to be part of renewing and rebuilding things that have been damaged or that are not as God wants them to be. Using clean energy that doesn t pollute the earth, also known as renewable energy (another re word) is a way to renew our world and beat climate change. (If you have any solar lights or wind up torches, you could bring these in to show the children). Ask: What things would you not be able to do or use? Get children to shout out answers - hopefully they ll come up with no computer, TV, vacuum cleaner etc. Also prompt children about not being able to do much after sundown in terms of reading/studying, no fridge or freezer to keep things fresh this is especially important for medicines not being able to charge a phone. It doesn t seem fair that some people around the world have so little when we have so much, which is why God calls his church to act to make the world fairer. Tearfund works around the world with the church to help people living in poverty. It wants the world to be restored to God s original design, where everyone has enough. Your church may already be part of this (refer back to previous conversation if appropriate). Tearfund is campaigning to help people like Sylvia get renewable energy in their community. One in six people do not have access to electricity. (Illustrate how many people that would be in your group or church family. You could get one in six of the people in the room to stand up, or get the children into groups of six and get one child in every group to stand up). It s hard to imagine what it would be like to never have electricity, but try now...
ACTIVITY - WRITING A LETTER TO THE GOVERNMENT Slide 7 We re going to join Tearfund s Renew Our World campaign by writing a letter to the government to ask them to help people like Sylvia get renewable energy in their communities. Writing this letter is a part of following Jesus and being reconcilers like he was. We are going to speak up for people, to help reconcile broken relationships. Depending on the age of your children and the size of your group, you may wish to have one big letter already written that the children sign and decorate (maybe with items linked to renewable energy like the sun, wind turbines etc, or with items that use electricity). Alternatively, you could make a card with text inside that the children decorate. If you have a big group you could give each child a smaller piece of paper in a speech bubble shape (roughly 10cm x 15cm) which they could decorate with pictures and a message, plus their name. These speech bubbles could then all be stuck to the card or letter. If your children are older they could write their own cards/letters and you could enclose a typed covering letter to go with them. This is a suggested text for the letter, but please do alter it accordingly. Dear Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development We are xxx group from xxx Church in xx town. We ve been finding out from Tearfund how hard life is for a family in Malawi who are affected by climate change. Sylvia and her four children are struggling to grow enough food because the changing climate is making the weather erratic. We ve been thinking about what we can do to beat climate change. (Put in details if you are already doing things like recycling, switched energy provider to renewable electricity etc). We also found out that one in six people around the world don t have electricity. We are concerned for those people, especially children who cannot do homework in the evenings or do not have access to medicine that has been stored safely in fridges. Now that solar panels and batteries are cheap enough to put up in the remotest places, ours could be the first generation where everyone has electricity. And that would be even better if it was renewable energy that doesn t increase climate change. We re glad our government is helping provide energy access for people living in poverty, thank you for DFID s work on this. We d like to see the UK prioritise support for renewable energy, like solar, bringing clean power to people in poverty in rural communities rather than polluting energy that is adding to the problem of climate change. This would also help keep our great promise in the Paris Agreement. If we want to beat poverty we need to tackle climate change. Yours sincerely, The letter will need to be posted back to Tearfund (Advocacy Team, ) so that we can add it to letters from other churches, and we ll deliver them all in person to the Department for International Development.
WRAP UP End with a discussion on the fact that there are plenty of other ways we can renew our climate change affected world...recycle, use less carbon by walking/cycling, eat less meat, get our electricity from a 100 per cent renewable provider (some children may know where there are solar panels or wind turbines nearby), share our things, use the library rather than buying new books etc. You might want to make a list, and let children put a dot or a tick on the actions they already do or would like to do. Every time we do something to make the world a fairer place we are mending relationships and being part of renewing the world. PRAY Slide 8 Thank God that he is working through his Spirit and through the church to renew the world. Please pray for Sylvia and families like hers, that they would be able to flourish. Pray also for your church and each other, and for the actions you are already taking to mend our broken world. And pray for our government as they make decisions which can help tackle problems like climate change. The Renew Our World campaign is an international campaign and this is a prayer from Australia: Dear Lord, Renew our spirits and cleanse our hearts Renew our minds and transform our lives Renew our cities and rebuild our ruins Renew our world, in your name we pray, Amen. SOME EXTRA GAMES FOR A LONGER SESSION In the dark If you have a long enough session you might want to include a game that involves it being dark. For example if you have some plastic skittles and a lightweight ball, you could set them up and then switch the lights off, giving each child a chance to bowl. Show them how much harder it is to hit the target without the lights on. Alternatively, do a treasure hunt in the dark to make the same point. Use counters/coins or some other item that you have plenty of. Hide them around the room. Switch the light off and let the children come in and find the treasure. Obviously you ll need some faint light for safety reasons, and will need to decide what works for your children (make sure they don t run, bump heads etc). Stress that although they might have had fun trying to do these tasks in the dark, it wouldn t be much fun if they didn t have light at home when they wanted to play or get things done. They could also do the treasure hunt with torches to show how useful torches/lights are. Word game Get into teams of two or three people. How many words can each team think of that begin with re? Give them a few minutes to write down as many words as they can. Go around the teams with each shouting out one word that hasn t been mentioned yet. Thank you so much for using our Renew Our World materials with your young people. We d love to hear how the session went (campaigns@tearfund.org) and to know if there are any other ways we can support your church in the joyful calling of renewing and reconciling.