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Church: Not Everyone’s Cuppa!

A session exploring different ways of expressing church and getting young people to think about what church is and how they can be church

Suitable For Ages 11 upwards
Required: pens, paper, flip-chart,

Session Plan

Ice Breaker: Ask the group to go around and say 2 hobbies they have, they should also be asked to think of 2 hobbies they would never take up.

Intro:
Explain that everyone likes things differently, some people like some activities and others hate the same things. Church and Christianity can be a bit like that, people have lots of different ideas, ways of doing it etc but not all of them suit everyone’s needs. This morning is about thinking of different ways we can do church and thinking about how different people find alternative ways to worship.

Brain Storm:
Ask the group to then brainstorm what they think a Christian is and what they think a Christian does.
Ask the group to think about what they think Church is?

Bible:
Look at 1 Corinthians 12 (?) which talks about how the body of Christ is the church, aka the people.

Brain Storm:
Ask the group (in light of this passage) to think of different ways which church can be expressed?
(You could pull some ideas from Pete Ward’s Book ‘Liquid Church’)

Explain:
Church isn’t about singing hymns, listening to sermons, praying, raising hands, dancing or any of that. Those things can be expressions of church but church is where the people of God are. A group of Christian’s could go bowling and in theory that could be church.

However prayer, worship and exploring the bible are all essential ways for us to develop our relationship with God which we’ve been looking at over the last few weeks.

Share:
Ask the group to think of times when they’ve been out with Christians, it might be with a youth group or with normal mates who happen to be at church. Have they had any significant conversations about their faith? Thought about God?

The leader may wish to share a personal story here

Explain:
Not everything a church does is everyone’s cup of tea, not every worship song is loved by everyone, not every prayer motivates you to do something (often prayers send you to sleep!!!) but mixing with Christians is a key thing for our faith, no matter how you do it.

Brain Storm:
Ask the group to think about why mixing with other Christians is a key thing.
Answers may include: accountability, discussing issues, praying for each other etc.

Expand:
This may be tricky depending on the answers the group came up with above but it would be worth trying to expand on each of them, getting the group to think why those things are key, if you can think of bible references or examples that back them up that’s even better!

Accountability

Explain:
Accountability is all about sharing with someone, for example if you’re having trouble reading your bible you might be accountable to someone in order to help you read more. They might pray with you about it, phone you to check you’ve read some bible etc.

Find Someone!
If there is anything in your faith you’re struggling with you might feel like you want someone to be accountable to, it might be a Christian friend and you might both be accountable to each other, but depending on the issue you might want to talk to your youth leaders, they can help support you, offer advice etc.

Closing The Session

Explain:
The point of this morning is that church comes in different shapes and forms, there isn’t one set way, there are endless ways and in the centre of them all lies a great and mighty God.

Think:
Can you think of ways you can express church in your life outside of Park Road?

To Finish:
Pray about anything that has come up and anything going on in the lives of the young people.