Over the past several weeks, we’ve been having a lot of fun with the kids in the children’s ministry. We learned about “beautiful feet” and we wore crazy shoes. We learned about how Abraham is the father of all believers, and Abraham visited our classrooms singing “Father Abraham had many sons.” There have been weeks with puppets and fun games as well.
This past week was a bit different and a bit more serious. Our lesson centered Acts 28:17-31, which tells about the ministry of the Apostle Paul while he was in chains during his first Roman imprisonment. A leader in each children’s assembly was chained to a chair as Paul, and a narrator talk about Paul’s suffering and how his message was rejected by the Jews in Rome but accepted by the Gentiles. The kids felt of a chain or rope and imagined what it must have been like to be in chains for Christ. Take time this week to ask your kids about the lesson and read back through the passage in Acts 28.
As adults we must come up with ways for our children to understand concepts that are hard to understand. If you only tell children about Paul’s struggles they wouldn’t understand enough for the message to come through. By adding the element of an actual chain, you made world of a difference for the children’s ability to understand.