St Matts Online Church Parents Pack:

Living With the Son

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Welcome to your Online Church Family Pack

As we learn to adapt to all the changes over the coming days and weeks,

I’m excited to consider how our families might be able to grow together

spiritually.

God said this to his people in Deuteronomy 6…

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord

your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your

strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on

your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when

you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie

down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands

and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes

of your houses and on your gates.

Now more than ever we need to cling to God and his word. And now more

than ever we need to be letting God’s word be on our own hearts and to

impress it upon our children.

Our prayer is that this pack will help you to do church well together as a

family.

Love from Naomi & the Kids Ministry Team

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What’s in your Family Pack? We have put together 4 different packs: 1. Parent’s Pack 2. Primary Kids Pack 3. Infants Kids Pack 4. Preschool Kids Pack

The Parent’s Pack This pack will help you navigate Online Church together. It contains: 1. A Family Devotion to do before or after the service 2. A short Service Discussion to recap the service 3. Some activities you could do as a family 4. A Memory Verse to learn as a family

The Kids Packs These packs contain activity sheets at either Preschool, Infants or Primary level for the kids to do during the sermon. It is designed to help them connect with some of the content of the sermon (although we know they won’t understand it all).

BEFORE the Service Read through the activity sheets with the kids and answer any questions they may have about what they need to do. This will hopefully reduce the number of questions they may ask during the sermon time itself.

DURING the Service Just before the sermon begins, encourage the kids to listen to Bruce so they can complete their activities. Remind them that it’s ok if they don’t complete every activity, you can go through it with them after the service.

AFTER the Service Use the Service Discussion section of this pack to engage with what the kids learnt during the service.

Some Helpful Tips • Make sure you’ve printed the kids activity packs. • Provide coloured pencils, textas, pens, or something for your kids to write/draw with. • You may like to have some stickers or other things your children could use to

decorate their activity sheets. • You might like to have a ‘Kids Kitchen’ snack for them to have during the service.

Social Media Make sure you follow our socials and share what you’ve been doing by tagging us. @stmattskids St Matts Kids

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What’s in your Parents Pack?

1. A Family Devotion

2. Service Discussion

3. Family Activities

4. Memory Verse

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1. Family Devotion Intro Question

• What is something you have learnt from Ecclesiastes so far?

We’re coming to the end of the book of Ecclesiastes and what the Teacher has to say to us. And this final chapter is VERY important, especially for kids!

Read Ecclesiastes 12:1, 13-14

1Remember your Creator while you are young, before the bad times come—before the years come when you say, “I have wasted my life.”

13-14 Now, what should we learn from everything that is written in this book? The most important thing a person can do is to respect God and obey his commands, because he knows about everything people do—even the secret things. He knows about all the good and all the bad, and he will judge people for everything they do.

Bible Questions

• What does the teacher say we should do? (v1)

• What is the most important thing we can learn from the book of Ecclesiastes? (v13-14)

• Why should we respect God? (v13-14)

• Where do we learn about God’s commands?

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• We won’t always obey God’s commands perfectly. So what did God do for us? (Romans 5:8)

• Who has God given us to help us obey him? (John 16:13))

Application Questions

• What are some ways you could remember God and obey his commands as a family?

• What are some of the things you love and respect about God?

• Are there some commands you find harder than others to obey?

• What are some practical ways you can help yourself and each other to obey God when you find it hard?

Prayer

• Thank God that he loves us and knows us. • Thank God that Jesus died on the cross to take away our sin and rose to

life again. • Thank God that he sent his Spirit to live in us and help us to obey him. • Say sorry to God for the times we don’t respect and obey him. • Pray that God Spirit will change us and help us to live the way he wants

us to.

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2. Service Discussion

1. What did you do in your activity pack?

2. What did you learn?

3. What did you like the best about the online church today?

4. What did you find confusing (if anything)?

3. Family Activities God is… Poster Make a poster with all the things you love about God on it.

Promise Jar Find an old jar, box, or anything else that you could fill with little pieces of paper with Bible verses on them. Ask the kids to decorate the container, so that each week you can add a verse or two that reminds you of how amazing God’s word is. Write them down on a piece of paper, roll it up and put it inside the jar.

Post your jar on Social Media and tag us @ St Matts Kids.

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4. Memory Verse

The most important thing a person can do is to respect God and obey his commands, because he knows about everything people do.

Ecclesiastes 12:13b

Magic Box Letters

Write out the memory verse with Magic Box Letters (see tutorial here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crOdZoHqW-8&feature=share) and see if other members of your family can guess what each word is.

Social Media Make sure you follow our socials and share what you’ve been doing by tagging us.

@stmattskids St Matts Kids

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