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We want to communicate with you in all kinds of ways and so our postings will be many and varied! We do offer a weekly children's sermon and monthly Time Together devotional on a regular basis. You can find those through the archives as well as the Children's Sermons and Resources Tabs. We hope you will leave your comments and contribute to the networking of this site!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Children's Sermon Matthew 18:15-20 Pentecost 12A


Faith+Open: Gather children with you and a copy of the 10 commandments with you. Show them what you have and explain what it is.

Faith+Share: I am going to tell you a commandment and I want you to tell me if it's about loving God or loving people. Read all or some of the commandments and have them respond with God or People. The commandments are there for us to know that loving God and loving people are the most important ways we live together. Now, we may know this is important but let me see... raise your hand if you ever have a disagreement with someone during the day. Think of all the people you see in a day and if you ever have times that you don't get along.... I can tell you that I am remember that my brother and I argued probably a lot when we were kids. And we would often go and run and tell our mom--how many of you do that? We wanted her to pick one person to be right, but you know, she never really did--even when I KNEW that of course I was right! Instead she wanted us to work out. Do you ever hear those words to 'work it out'?   Today our Gospel story Jesus tells us how to work things out with other people. It's not always easy but first we need to tell the person why what they are doing is not okay with us. Then if that doesn't work we can go get help to work it out. And you know what--we are asked to do this with love. Wow. That's hard. I remember one time my brother and I had to hold hands while we were arguing, that sure made us want to figure it out quickly! Jesus asks us to work things out and to remember that the other person is a loved child of God just like we are--and Jesus promises to be with us even when we are angry or in a fight with someone else. You can take anytime in your life and Jesus promises to be there with you and with the other person. 


Faith+Prayer: God, we don't always like everybody. We don't always get along. Be with us when we argue and help us to remember to love. Thank you for your promise to be with us all of the time. Amen

Faith+Blessing: Make the sign of the cross together and say
God in my head
God in my heart
God on left
God on my right

Make the sign a second time together saying
God in my highs
God in my lows
God with me today
God with me wherever I go

***idea for using the 10 commandments is modified from Worshiping with Children

Extended resources: Worshiping with Children Year A Proper 18 has some excellent ideas and refers to two books that would work well to read for children's sermon instead of using the 10 commandments.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

September Faith + Share


The kids are back in school, families are settling into new routines and many activities are ramping up again for the fall. September is a wonderful time to begin the routine of family devotion time! Even if you start once a month or once a week, this month’s Faith Share is a meaningful reminder that God’s ways are not our ways and we all have much to learn about God!

Faith + Time: This month’s devotion comes from Matthew 20:1-16 and is the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. It can be found in your Spark Story Bible on page 298. (Use whatever Bible you have!)  Choose a family member to read the story out loud.

Faith + Share: 
Adults: This story by Jesus on the outset appears to be that no matter how hard you work you will get the same reward. This concept is very counter-cultural in 21st century America as well as in Jesus’ time. How do we usually feel about people who don’t put in the same effort but seem to get the same reward? If we were the laborers who had worked all day we would grumble too! But Jesus reminds us that it is not about our deeds that our reward depends on but the graciousness and generosity of God. God chooses us and we don’t earn our way to God. How can we apply this same generosity to those around us?

Children: God loves you very much and doesn’t care if you are little or big, able to help a lot of people or only just one person. God just wants you to know that you belong to God. God wants us to remember to treat other people as special as God treats us. How can you show your friends that they are special? What about letting them go first in a game or in line at school? What about with your brothers/sisters? Maybe you could let them have the first snack or you could share a toy with them.

Faith + Serve: There are many people in our communities who work very hard but do not receive a fair wage for their work. These families struggle to provide food, clothing and other necessities. There are many organizations that help families in this situation. In the Denver Metro area Interchurch is once such organization. Consider a donation of your time, goods that they may need or monetary contribution. Visit: interchurch.org or look up a similar organization in your community!

Faith + Remembrance: If you choose to help a community organization, consider having a change jar on your dining table where at the family meal each day change is put in the jar to go to others. As change is added say, “The last will be first and the first will be last. We all belong to God and God’ generosity is forever, amen.” Or add this petition to your mealtime prayers.

~Brigette Weier
*You are free to use this devotion in your home or part of a congregational event. Intellectual property laws apply and this material may not be reproduced for profit without expressed permission from Faith Formation Journeys and it's authors.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Children's Sermon Matthew 16:21-28 Pentecost 11A

Follow Me... (not me, Jesus)...


Faith+Open: Before the service enlist a couple of older children who will come up and follow you wherever you go. Think about how they could follow you as you go to the front, etc.
Gather the kids. Have the 2-3 children who are trailing you stick close and walk around a bit.

Introduce the story by saying something like, "Today we are going to hear readings about love and following. Jesus in Matthew tells his disciples to follow him and Paul in Romans is talking about how to love one another...''

Now, 'notice' the children following you. Ask, "What are you doing?" Prompt them to respond, "Following you"
"Oh is this kind of following we are to do when we follow Jesus? So you are just going to follow me whatever I do... So if I do this.. (jump, or skip or hop or do some silly things--end with sitting down and having the kids sit with you."

Faith+Share: How many of you have followed someone or played follow the leader? How about when you are not playing a game, can you think of people that you follow or that follow you? (get answers about teachers, or parents, siblings, etc). When we follow other people we sometimes are trying to be like them. Which if they are teaching us good things about living in the world that is a great thing! What about following Jesus, how do we follow Jesus when we can't walk right behind him and jump when he jumps?
(get answers)
We can read scripture and stories about Jesus to know how to follow and we can remember that Jesus asked us to follow him with love. We love the people around us and we love those we don't even know. We love people by being kind, helping them, and praying for them. Is it always easy to do this? Is it easy to love or pray for people that aren't nice to you or that are difficult? Do you know people at school or in your neighborhood that it might be hard to love? Jesus even wants us to love those people, we don't have to play with them all the time or hang around them if they are mean but we do follow Jesus by praying for them and by showing that we care about people. This is not always easy but the good news is that Jesus is with us and loves us and all people first so we can follow Jesus.

Faith+Prayer: God, help us to love and care about people. Thank you for your words and your love that we can follow. Amen

Extended: 
1. There is children's book called Miss Tizzy that is review on Children's Literature blog. This could be read as the children's sermon or used in children's church or another time.
2. Have a simple service project, like filling backpacks with school supplies or baggies with health care items for a local shelter.


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Children's Sermon Matthew 16:13-20 Pentecost 10A

Faith+Open: Gather the children around you and ask them, who am I? Get their answers (if they can only come up with 'pastor' or 'youth director' or whatever your role may be help them along and name some things that you are (mother/father, son/daughter, fisherman, hiker, etc). How do you know who I am?

Faith+Share: You know who am by things you see me do or by what I tell you or teach you. Give an example--you would know that I like bike riding if you saw me out on my bike enjoying a ride. Or you might know that because I have told you a story about one of my bike rides. How do we know who Jesus is? Gather their answers--help them along if needed.

We know who Jesus is because of the stories we have in scripture, the prayers we say in worship and on our own. The disciples are with Jesus in our gospel today. (If you have time use the book mentioned in the extended activities). They know who he is because they have been following him for awhile now. But there are many people who aren't sure who Jesus is and Jesus is asking what people are saying about him. Some think he is one of the prophets who lived before him who has come back. Peter says to Jesus that he knows who Jesus is, That he is the messiah, the Son of God. Peter knows this because of what he has seen and because of what Jesus has told him.
We might not live in the time Jesus did but we still know who he is--can you think of some words or names that you have heard to talk about Jesus?

Do you know what else we know because we know who Jesus is? We know who we are! You could say to that you know who I am because I am a child of God and I know who you are because you are a child of God. We all belong to God and we are marked with that blessing in our baptism and in our prayers and in our confessions and when we come to the table--we are a child of God all the time and everywhere. Each and everyone of you is a loved child of God--the most important part of who you are!

Faith+Prayer: God, you love your son Jesus who is our Messiah. Help us remember that we are your loved children so that we always know who we are and who we belong to. Amen

Faith+Blessing: Have children repeat this blessing with you using your hands to make the cross. May you always know you are loved child of God. Invite them to go give that blessing to someone they are sitting with in the congregation.

Extended Idea:  Read Jesus, This Is Your Life: Stories & Pictures by Kids edited by Jeff Kunkel summary found at Children's Literature: A Resource for Ministry and have children draw their own story of Jesus' life in their own life. 

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Sermon Deuteronomy 6:5-Faith Formation (B. Weier)


Prayer: God you are our God alone. We strive everyday to live in your word and to share that word with others especially those who live in our homes and are in our daily lives. We ask that you keep our hearts centered on you and that our every breath be like prayer. We ask this in the name of your son Jesus Christ, your Word and love made flesh among us, amen.
Grace and peace to you from God our creator, Jesus Christ our redeemer and the Holy Spirit our animator, amen.

Shema Israel, Yahweh elohim Yahweh ehad. Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is God alone or ehad can be translated as first. God first. The Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 passage is one of my favorite in the whole Bible and calls me to ministry and has framed my ministry. It was important for the Israelite people as well, so important that they recited Deut. 6: 4-9 twice a day…once in the morning and once at night. They recited it in the morning to remind them that they were to keep God the focus of their own lives that day as well as the importance of teaching God to their children and their children’s children. They recited it at night before bed as a way of reflecting on how they did keeping God as the center of their lives and teaching what it means to belong to God to the next generation. According to this passage every fiber of their being is to belong to God and God was with them always in every time and place.
            The Israelites knew instinctively that if they did not teach their children about God then who would? The imperative to the parents to teach their children in this passage is clear. It is worth noting that our passage this morning doesn’t say be sure to get them to Sunday school or be sure that they go to confirmation so that they know about God. Nor does it say that only the  priests were responsible for teaching the children about God. No it is clear that the parents and everyone in the community at all times and in all places should be passing on their deep and abiding faith in God.
            Now at this point it is clear that an apology is in order. In the past 70 years or so the mainline Protestant Christian Church has adopted a model of ministry based on our western culture of there are experts in a field and there are novices. If you want to know about something, go to an expert-someone who has gone to school for years and seems to know everything that there is about a subject. As a society, we have come to believe that there is always someone who knows better than us how we should do something. As parents, we began to trust teachers, doctors, child care providers, police officers and yes, even clergy, with the care and development of our children over our own instinct. We were told that these people were the experts and that we did not know enough to effectively raise our own kids! Or if we were unsure or nervous about talking to our kids about God then just bring them to the Church and let us do it for you.
The intent behind this was noble and an attempt to help parents and families. The Church fell into this model with the best of reasons…but it was a false notion that experts could form faith better than parents and other caring adults who lived with the children in community. We neglected our own tradition of faith being formed through personal relationships by people who really care for each other. We neglected to trust the Holy Spirit in our conversations and interactions. As someone who has worked for the Church in education for better than 15 years and is just as guilty of this…let me now say…I am sorry. Not just to you here today but to all of the parents, including myself, who now think that we are not qualified to form faithful followers of God ourselves in our own home and that it takes some sort of special training to teach our children about God.
            To move forward we have to recover our scriptures and look closely at what is actually said. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the experts are the ones bearing the good news and so get your kids to them! God doesn’t care if we know everything before we can talk to our kids or anyone about God. God wants families and communities to journey together in their relationship with God, even if it is imperfectly. The most important thing to God is that it is happening-not what level of expertise one may have about the Bible. Studies in faith formation has shown that the most important influence on young people and their spiritual development is the mother with the father a close second. Pastors are usually down the list a bit-sometimes they are as high as number 3 but usually they are around 5 or 6 on the list behind other relatives and friends.
            Parents are the first care-givers for a child and have a great wealth of knowledge about how that particular child learns, interacts and thinks. Equipping the home to be the heart of faith formation must now be our imperative if we want the next generation to Christ centered.
            Now you are saying ok this is all well and good Intern pastor Brigette but now what? Well, the “now what” is not simple and it is not quick. As caring Christian adults we all must every morning and night ask how we are doing centering our lives on scriptures as the Israelites did. Are we talking to the next generation about the good news of presence of God? For you see it is not just the biological parents who are responsible for faith formation. The studies I talked about earlier also discovered that it takes 5-7 Christian adults to raise a Christian child. This is beyond mom and dad and even aunts and uncles. We know that every Christian adult is a Christian parent whether or not they have any biological children. This also means for someone like myself who does have children that I still have a responsibility to other children and youth around me. I am as responsible for Mikaela Baumert, Madison Petrock, or Maegan Walker, or Jessie Kranzler or any of the other children here faith formation as I am Kayla and Andrew’s. Anytime we baptize in the Lutheran church (and in many other mainline churches) we promise to be a part of that child’s faith formation. When the parents promise to bring that child to church that means we promise for there to be something here for that child to learn about God.
            As I said before, this is not necessarily simple but there is a simple way to start. I don’t know if you have noticed my monthly newsletter articles have become household devotions. There will be one every month and perhaps occasionally with a sermon. If you look at them they have four components 1) devotion on a scripture 2) faith sharing conversation around that scripture 3) a ritual that reinforces the scripture and 4) a service idea. These four areas are key components to faith formation. Our Deuteronomy text tells us as much: 1) recite the scripture (devotion) 2) talk about it all day long (faith sharing-conversation) 3) bind it on your foreheads, hands (ritual) and 4) if you are placing the word of God on your doorposts then you are serving the world by proclaiming God not just in Word but in deed.  All who enter your home will be moved by your faith. These four areas remind us that the good news of God in Jesus Christ makes a difference not just in the church but in our homes.
            It makes a difference, in my preschool back in OR we sent home weekly devotions structured around these four areas tying into something that we were doing in school. On Palm Sunday every year the weekday preschool children lead the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer so we, of course, recited it in school everyday. We sent home devotions on the Lord’s Prayer complete with a ritual and a service project. The ritual was praying the Lord’s Prayer together and then making the sign of the cross on the children’s foreheads before bed time and saying, May the Lord Bless you and keep you. We knew that parents may be uneasy with that so we decided to model it by blessing each child with this ritual at pick-up time at the end of the school day.
One mom a couple weeks after the Palm Sunday worship pulled me aside at drop off to tell me a story. The little girl Ella who had been coming to our preschool that year was so excited about the Lord’s Prayer. Her father was not churched and didn’t know it. Mom revealed that there was some tension between her and Ella’s dad over Ella even going to a Lutheran preschool. He didn’t see the need for God talk in their home. But Ella was so excited about learning the Lord’s Prayer that the father decided to learn it with her. At the Palm Sunday worship the father came to sit right in front of Ella in the front pew to recite it with her. I thought that maybe he was up front to calm Ella. But apparently Ella had insisted that her dad say it with her that morning. Ella then began asking her dad to do the blessing that Miss Brigette and Miss Tonia was giving her. Her dad at first said no but after Ella said, “But daddy I want a blessing from you,” he immediately did the blessing and did so every night from that night on. The mother then said that they now do the devotions as a family and it has changed how they talk to one another, how they spend their time and how they now worry more about helping others. What’s more, when friends come over for dinner they still did the devotions but included the friends. Then she looked sheepish and said….don’t be offended but sometimes we change your devotion or make up our own! I was not only not offended but moved to tears.
They were living out the Deut. 6. They had fully claimed the role that God had given them from the time that Ella was born. They understood that God was present not just in church but in their home and everywhere that they went. They understood that God was using them to pass faith on to their children and others. They fully recognized the difference that the good news of Jesus Christ makes in their family and in the lives and relationships with their children. Shema Israel Yahweh Elohim Yahweh ehad, Hear all of us that the Lord our God is first-in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls and in our homes. Amen!

~Brigette Weier author and preacher

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Children's Sermon Isaiah 56:-1-8 Pentecost 9A August 14, 2011

This week texts are full of images of inside and outside that may be difficult for children (and adults for that matter!) to pick up on. Spend some time focusing on how Christ came with an openness that extends past all the boundaries we put up knowingly and unknowingly. 


Faith+Open: Gather the children at the front with you. Ask them not to sit but to stand and make a circle. Stand in the middle of the circle. Ask the kids to put one foot in the circle and show how they are on the inside of the circle. Ask, who is on the outside of this circle? (answers like others in the congregation, etc)

Faith+Share: We will hear from a prophet today--Isaiah. Isaiah is a prophet who wanted the people of God to understand that how they lived with others mattered to God. Isaiah talks about some people who were difficult for the others to welcome in or get along with or understand. They were people that most others would not want to let into the inside of this circle. They wanted God to be just for them. Can you think of people who might be hard for you to get along with or people that would be hard to welcome? Yeah, that is a reality of life we don't always let people in the inside of our lives or even the inside of groups that we belong to. Where do you think Jesus is in the circle? (get answers) I was once told by a wise person that whenever we make a circle around Jesus, trying to keep Jesus in one place with us--Jesus moves to the outside of the circle (move to the outside of the circle). Jesus wants everyone to know God's love and does not stay inside one little place or with one group of people. Jesus' love opens up the circle. (at this point pick a place at the top of the circle, have the two ends open up to make a line and ask them to hold their arms out).  Explain that now we have this open circle that will allow anyone in (even all those people out in the congregation, ha, ha).

Faith+Prayer: Let's all Pray together: Jesus, help us to open our circles and open our hearts. Be with us today and with all those who need to hear your voice of love. Amen

Faith+Blessing: Make the sign of the cross together: God in my head, God in my heart, God on my left, God on my right.

Extended ideas: I love this idea at Worshiping with Children. Click the link to see the explanation about having people collect prayers in baskets for those on the outside.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Children Sermon August 7, 2011 Romans 10 Pentecost 8A

This children’s sermon is based off of the Romans 10: 5-15 focusing on verse 15.

Faith +Open: Gather the children up at the front and welcome them. You may want to have them sit in a circle at this time so that when you do the faith + blessing they are already in a circle. So when your teacher at school wants you to know something important what does he or she do? Answers may range from telling the students about the subject matter, showing a video, or showing an object that is related to the lesson, etc. That’s right! When someone has something important to tell us they will use all kinds of different ways to tell us, not just with words! Did you know that you have something very important to share with everyone you know? You do! God! We are supposed to tell everyone we know about how much God loves the whole world. But it’s hard sometimes isn’t it? We may forget or get embarrassed or wonder what we should actually say.

Faith + Share: But this morning the Bible tells us that we can’t keep this wonderful love of God to ourselves! God sends us to school, the playground, to baseball practice, to our friends houses, everywhere, to tell about God’s love. Now we don’t always have to use our words we can share God’s love by helping people and by being a good friend, but our words are important too! It says in the Bible “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news!” Well, your feet bring the good news of God! And your feet are beautiful. To help you remember that you bring God everywhere you go we are going to do something special this morning. We are going to bless your feet! And we are going to give you a safety pin with red beads on it to attach to your shoe or sock to remind you that you bring the good news of God’s love everywhere you go!

Faith+Blessing/Faith+Prayer: Hand out the pins with the beads. Have other adults handy to help attach the pins to shoelaces or socks. Then do this blessing: Have all of the kids stand in a circle and put their foot with the pin attached in the circle. Pray: Dear God, thank you for all of these feet that spread your love in the world. You use all of our feet whether they are big or small, walk slow or fast or can walk at all. You promise to be with us always and we know that we can share your love with everyone we meet. Thank you for sending us! In Jesus name, Amen.

If you can’t get the pins made in time for Sunday, gather the materials in a baggie to give to the children to make later at home. You could expand this blessing to the entire congregation! Adults may like the pin as well!