This Easter leave the word and the World behind
With the Holy Week fast approaching it’s a timely reminder to leave the World out of your Holy Week Teaching.
It’s so very easy to include the “easy colouring for kids” of white bunnies with fluffy tails and pictures of patterned eggs. You may even be planning an “Easter Egg Hunt” in your church. In short, just don’t!
The Holy Week teaching is packed full of wonderful lessons to teach the children in church. Let your lessons be full of the death of Jesus and why it had to happen, not so much the “how” it happened, but definitely the “why”. Let your teaching be full of the wonderful resurrection.
The death of Jesus and His resurrection is fundamental to our faith as Christians, so why wouldn’t we want to teach that to our children? How old do they have to be until they stumble across the why and how we can be with our Father in Heaven, the sooner the better I say.
Start with dropping the word Easter
How do we start, well drop the word “Easter”, Easter is from the world, it is a Pagan festival about fertility, is this what the teaching should be for children?
I’m sure so many teachers have been asked by the inquisitive child, why rabbits at Easter? Do you answer giving them the full story of Fertility Gods and a festival to honour them, well, let’s hope not as you are breaking commandments four and six straight away. Also, the children ask, why eggs, why chocolate, the lamest answer you could possibly give them is “new life” and then we cover it in chocolate and eat it.
Leave the chocolate for home
Why, yes it’s fun to have an Easter egg hunt, it’s fun to eat chocolate come a Resurrection Sunday, but let’s leave it for home, the messages we give our children from church should not be confused with those messages of the world.
What is so easy is to teach the children from an early age, that our Easter in church is called The Holy Week, it is about Jesus’ journey to His death and His witness for all of eternity that God wins and conquers death.
Threetosix teaching that provides curriculum for Sunday Schools from ages 2-12 years old, has 4 weeks of lessons, (which isn’t nearly enough) to get across some of the wonderful lessons from the bible around the Holy Week.
We all get angry!
You can teach the children the difference between anger and righteous anger with the demonstration of Jesus finding the Temple being used as a market place.
He does more than just heal!
You can teach them about Jesus’ final miracle of raising Lazarus. He didn’t rush to Lazarus’ sick bed and heal him, no even more miraculous Jesus raised him after being buried. The message here, if Jesus can raise a man from the dead, why wouldn’t He do that for you?
Why Judas?
Another lesson is on why the Devil picked Judas to betray Jesus. Judas was already on the Devil’s radar as he was stealing from the “disciples’ purse”. He looked on and thought Judas could so easily be mine. Teaching the children to stay on God’s path all the time and not give the other guy a chance.
So many lessons, so little time, you see Holy Week Teaching isn’t just about Jesus on the cross and Jesus’ resurrection, yes, it should definitely be in there but let our focus be on why God allowed His one and only son to die. The answer is the Good News and it has nothing, I repeat nothing to do with chocolate eggs and bunnies.
I always say if you are in a building and they call themselves “a church”, check to see if the people in that building are loving and kind and not just when they welcome you and you are a “new” person to their organisation. Are they still kind, when you are stacking chairs, or handing out cups of tea, are they still kind when you get home exhausted from serving others on a Sunday morning? Do they text you and say a “huge thanks”? Because if they don’t look, act and sound like Jesus in that building it’s probably not a church.
If the place you go, teaches children about Father Christmas and Easter eggs, it really might not be the right place for their or your everlasting journey to be with Him in Eternity. So, don’t let the world infiltrate your church or curriculum this Holy Week. Own it, teach it, and celebrate it.