When your children's ministry moves into the Easter season, how do you keep the focus off of Bunnies and Eggs and on Jesus? When dealing with secular kids, and those whose families are not very involved in their spiritual training, this can be quite an issue.A year ago I was planning our Logos Easter program with my 2nd and 3rd graders and they kept mentioning easter eggs and bunnies (they're not from my church). I decided that instead of telling them "No we don't do bunnies and eggs" I'd explain why. One of the kids is a champion speller so I said (in a much more elaborate way), "What if you won the national spelling bee and the town had a big celebration to honor you. But when you got there no one even said 'Hi' to you or mentioned your accomplishment instead they had all brought their dogs and they had turned it into a dog show. How would you like that?" (they didn't) so then I explained that Easter is when we celebrate Jesus dieing on the cross for us and then rising from the dead. "How do you think Jesus likes it when we ignore Him and just talk about bunnies and eggs?" I asked. They got the point, and loved it so much that they decided, totally on their own, that they wanted to turn that story into a play and teach that concept to the adults at the easter program.
I have written the story out as a narrated skit and my 2nd ans 3rd graders are practicing it right now.
Click here to read the skit.
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This post was originally posted Mar 13, 2008
2 comments:
Did Jesus teach us to celebrate His resurrection once a year???If so,why only once a year???If not,then most of the modern day teachings about Easter are misleading.
Brian,
Thanks for your thoughts.
My point is that if you're going to celebrate Easter keep the focus on Jesus. Easter is clearly not commanded in the Bible, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong to remember the resurrection on a certain day of the year. While I personally do not observe the day in my home, I've found that there is evangelistic potential in it and that's my only use for this holiday.
By the way, the book of Esther, gives Biblical precedent for people declaring a man-made religious holiday, Purim. God never commanded that Purim was to be a holiday but He apparently had no problem with it.
Also in John 10:22 we find Jesus celebrating a man made religious holiday, "the Feast of Dedication", or "Hanukkah." Again there is no Biblical command to keep this day but that didn't keep Jesus from doing it.
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