The Adventures of DOWNTOWN Kids
Since Trina Randle joined the staff at DOWNTOWN CHURCH a few months ago as our DOWNTOWN Kids coordinator, our youngest downtowners have been busy creating all kinds of things. We've seen them emerge from the DOWNTOWN Kids room after worship with boats, buildings, prayer pails, and loaves of bread.
The Bible stories that shape the theme for worship inspires the creative activity. For the kids, every Sunday seems to be an exercise in making the familiar stories of scripture we hear come alive in their hands. For those who don't get the scoop first hand, we're retelling the most recent adventures of DOWNTOWN Kids.
Science is cool, especially on Sundays.
Engineering and scripture don't usually inform each other. But DOWNTOWN Kids doesn't let odd pairings get in the way of learning something new.
One Sunday recently, we learned that God’s kingdom can be compared to a house, and that each brick in the house is like a person in the kingdom. We help build the kingdom by telling and showing others about the goodness of God and by living our lives the way God would want us to. So, we built little houses.
What would Jesus build? A boat, of course.
Jesus spent a lot of time traveling by boat. He traveled from place to place teaching crowds of people and telling parables and stories. From a boat he calmed a storm with the words, “Peace! Be still.”
In a different story about a boat, we learned that Jesus walked on water during a storm. His words, “Do not be afraid!” calmed the storm and saved his disciples and the boat, reminding us that Jesus is able to calm the storms in our lives if we just ask. Naturally, we built boats to make the miracle story a material reality.
Would we take our boats out on water? No, they were made out of paper. And paper boats sink. Fast. But we can take our boats home as a reminder that even the stormiest waters in life won't sink us as long as Jesus is in the boat with us.
We kneaded our own little loaves.
Jesus said, "I am the bread of life". Now, we know that what Jesus REALLY meant when he said this, but that did not stop us from making and baking our own little loaves of bread.
As we kneaded, we talked about how seeking Jesus and his wisdom will bring us the joy of knowing God, who will take care of all our needs.
We are not too young to jam.
At DOWNTOWN CHURCH, we love music! Yes, even the much cuter, smaller versions of us who gather during Worship in the room next door. So, we are happy that Chris Cobbs joins us on communion Sundays to bring some tunes to our program. On these special days, we get to sing some of the same songs that the band performs for the congregation.
Small hands, big hearts
Jesus’ stories of healing inspire us to think about how we can help our friends, family, and community. Sometimes all it takes is a kind word to change someone's day. That's why we create compassion cards. You gotta watch out, though. The compassion cards come out of nowhere, without warning, and we got plenty to go around.
Coming up next
In the coming weeks, the kids DOWNTOWN will plant a community garden project. The plan is to plant veggies to sell on Sunday mornings and offer our proceeds to a local charitable organization. If our thumbs are as green as we hope they are, we might even be able to offer our produce to local food pantries.