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We Can Save The World – Session 4 – We Can Save The World

Equipment: CDs or Guitar for worship, song words, laptop, projector, speakers, Evan Almighty DVD, large paper, pens, small pieces of paper

 

Worship: Start by having some sung worship

Recap: Recap with the group about the sessions from the weekend. Remind them that we have a world that needs saving, a group of disciples who embraced the challenge to spread the word of God and a God who can powerfully change lives.

Explain: Today is our last day…over the next week we’ll go back to our everyday lives. Back to school. Back to our Saturday jobs. Back to our families. Back to our social activities and that’s exactly where God wants us but it’s down to us to change our world.

Video: Evan Almighty Clip – 1 hours 22 minutes until 1 hour 25 minutes

Explain: In that clip God tells Evan that we can change the world ‘one act of random kindness at a time’. It’s not about big things…otherwise the challenge from Jesus becomes something daunting but it’s about little things. It’s about taking the opportunities we have in our everyday lives and using them to show others about God.

Small Groups: Split the group into smaller groups and invite each group to brainstorm/share ideas on how they can share God’s love in the following places (perhaps 1 per group then switch papers to add to the other groups) – school, home, clubs we go to & villages

Feedback: Feedback these ideas as a group. What ideas do we have? Are they ideas we can actually do? Are they things we do already?

Explain: The stories of the disciples we’ve read in Acts over the weekend show us that it’s not about just doing one-off things but that following Jesus and representing him is something that should flow into every aspect of our lives. Is our faith something that people can see? If they know we’re Christian do we put across a good image of Jesus?

It’s great that we have these ideas of how we can change the world and show them Jesus but it’s not about doing things because we have to but because we want to.

You may wish to replace the story below with one of your own

A good friend of mine got married in July and when he first met his fiance trying to get him to stop talking about her was different…he was so excited he wanted to tell everyone. The same thing happened on the few days leading up to his wedding…regardless of where we were everyone knew he was getting married in a few days…shop keepers, strangers, friends couldn’t escape the high-pitched ‘I’m getting married on Saturday’’s coming from his mouth.

He didn’t tell people because he had to but because he was so excited her literally couldn’t keep quiet about it.

Discuss: Is that how we feel about Jesus?

Challenges

Explain: I want to finish off these sessions together this weekend by us doing 2 things. Firstly I’m going to hand out 2 small pieces of paper for each of you and I’d like you to write on each 1 act of random kindness.

Put these into a hat and invite each person to pick 2 which they can do over the coming month.

Discuss: Allow some time to share and discuss these things. Explain that it’s good if they challenge us because that’s how God does things in our lives…by challenging us!

Explain: Secondly we’re going to think about something we can do as a group (and maybe involve the other members of the group) in our village perhaps as a one off.

Discuss/Plan: Spend some time thinking and planning out an idea for something bigger that the group can do.

Prayer

Finish the session by putting the young people into small groups and inviting them to pray for each other as they go back to the world.

Closing

Read the passage from Matthew 28: 16-20 together