the story of saul’s conversion to paul

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THE STORY OF SAUL’S CONVERSION TO PAUL

(1ST - 2ND GRADES)COPYRIGHT HARVEST BIBLE CHAPEL 2015

GOD IS REDEEMER. WEEK 4 ! 1

MINISTRY EXPERIENCE TOOL GOD IS REDEEMER. We belong to Him. WEEK 4: The Story of Saul’s Conversion to Paul

OVERVIEW Memory Verse: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:23-24 (ESV) Preschool will memorize only “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.

Nail: We belong to Him.

Week 1: The Story of Moses Scripture Story: Exodus 1-4

Week 2: The Story of Boaz Scripture Story: Ruth 1-4

Week 3: The Story of Stephen Scripture Story: Acts 6-7

Week 4: The Story of Saul’s Conversion to Paul Scripture Story: Acts 8-9

HOW THIS CHANGES ME: How can I live like I belong to Him? 1. Wake up every day and say: “I care about what God says about the choices I will make today.” 2. Ask your parent to bring you to church every weekend. 3. Open your Bible at home, look at the pictures and read it. 4. Make choices to honor the Lord.

COPYRIGHT HARVEST BIBLE CHAPEL 2015 GOD IS REDEEMER. WEEK 4

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HOW TO GRADE SCHOOL What To-Do in the Queue Welcome: Ask if they have been to church before / Call them by name / Ask about their family / Ask about their school and teacher / Ask about pets / Ask about previous week

Memory Verse Activity Disappearing Words “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:23-24 (ESV)

Instructions: The verse of the month slide will have words disappearing every 15-20 seconds. Have kids repeat the verse; filling in the blanks as they go.

Upfront Games (These games will be the same all month. Choose game (s) every week that work best.) All of these games require heavy volunteer involvement to help determine fairness and winner. These games require an upfront person to be engaging and fun (like a game show host) to be successful.

Bring It Up! Supplies: None Look around the room and notice things children are wearing. Choose items that are usual and unusual. Among your items, make sure to include a binder with last week’s devos completed, a Bible with John 3:16 underlined, and a Bible with a specific part of the scripture underlined from last month. Keep a mental list. To play the game, call out an item and kids who have what you are looking for should come to the front. Keep points per grade. The grade with the highest score wins.

Large Group Pictionary Supplies: Several canvasses per team, marker

1. Keep children in their teams and one child is assigned the “drawer”. 2. The drawer comes to the front and discreetly receives an object. 3. Child returns to team to begin drawing. 4. You may determine winner by points (first team to guess wins) or by how many pictures can be

guessed in the determined amount of time.

Large Group Charades Supplies: Large pictures or items that can be held up behind contestants. (Find random objects that remind children of activities that are relevant to this season of the year.)

1. Choose a child to represent each team. Each child representative comes to the front and is the contestant.

2. A volunteer stands behind the contestants and holds up an object. 3. On your mark, the large group starts calling clues to their contestant and the contestant tries to

guess the correct answer. 4. You can repeat with same children or switch out children.

Toss It Out! Supplies: Hula hoops, (one per team) toilet paper rolls (5-10 per team depending on attendance)

1. Distribute one hula hoop per team. 2. Choose a person to be the thrower. (It’s more fun when you rotate throwers every minute.) 3. On your mark, thrower begins under handed toss of toilet paper into the hula hoop. Volunteers

count. 4. Team with most points wins.


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GRADE SCHOOL: WHAT’S HAPPENING? Happy Birthday (generic) Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, God bless you. Happy Birthday to you.

Good Things Good Things is a great time for children to express something good that happened in the past week. The range of good things swings from “I just got back from vacation!” to, “I scored my first soccer goal yesterday!” to, “My parents didn’t fight this week!” and even sometimes, “My mom started coming to church with us today”. All are good and allows you to get to know the children whom God has entrusted to you, and allows the children to feel they are part of something special. It’s also a great time to ask children if they heard anything or learned anything that hadn’t known before.

What’s up with the “skit”? Weird. Silly. Stupid. What’s the point? Giggle. Chuckle. We hear it all about the video skit. The point of the video skit is, in the best way we know how, to demonstrate what God is not. If you look for that, you will be able to stand up and say, “Did you see that skit? I am so glad God is not like that. Here’s why …”

What does this mean to me? We have heard two stories in the last two weeks. Last week we heard about Stephen. He was a man who loved Jesus and served Him even when it was hard and people didn’t like him. Stephen belonged to God. He was redeemed. He also wanted others to belong to God – even the people who hurt him. Nothing was going to stop Stephen from telling people about Jesus. His life was changed because he belonged to Jesus. Yet people hated him, including the man we heard about today. In the New Testament, where we find today’s story, we heard about a man named Paul. We heard about the life that Paul lived before he belonged to God. And then we learned about how his life changed after he gave his heart to the Lord.

Let’s look at some of things I have on stage. These are things that kids your age love. (Talk about each one and their value.) If you own these, how do you treat them? Are they valuable to you?

My question today is, “If we belong to God, how should we live?” The first thing we should do every day before our feet hit the floor is to remember that “I care about what God says about the choices I will make today.” Everyday we should think about that before we eat breakfast, brush our teeth, or get dressed. We should come to church every week. Coming together with other people that love God so we can worship and learn together is very important. We should also want to read our Bibles at home and hear what the Bible says. Our fourth and final answer to the question “How should we live?” is we should honor the Lord in all that we think, feel and do. We don’t just show it with our outward actions but we show God we belong to Him with our inward feelings and thoughts. When we belong to God we will do things that show that we do. We will look differently because we belong to God. God is our redeemer and we belong to Him.

This month we will learn: How can I live like I belong to Him? 1. Wake up every day and say: “I care about what God says about the choices I will make today.” (Week

1) 2. Ask your parent to bring you to church every weekend. 3. Open your Bible at home, look at the pictures and read it. 4. Make choices to honor the Lord.

1st - 2nd Grades Application Station Activity Cotton Ball Rain Supplies: Cotton balls, basket Introduction: Tell children a story about the cotton balls: “Let’s use our imagination and pretend these cotton balls are people. These are people that need to know that God wants to redeem them. They can know this when someone like Paul or ‘volunteer’s name’ tells them with their mouth and shows them by their actions. Instructions: The volunteer gets children to sit on the floor. Gather children around the volunteer and give each child a handful of cotton balls. Instruct children they will move in a circle around the volunteer and when it’s their turn, drop the cotton balls over the volunteers head. The volunteer will grab a few (appearing to grab as many as they can) before they touch the ground and place them in their basket.


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Wrap Up: Just like the cotton ball that was grabbed (redeemed) before it touched the ground, we want to bring people to God by telling them the Good News and showing them that we belong to God with how we live.

Small Group 100% RESPONSE TOOL: True or False. Ask each group to vote on what action is true and what action is false. 1. Where do we find the true story of Saul? (New Testament, Acts 9) 2. 100% RESPONSE TOOL: Saul lived during the time of Jesus and was a powerful man after Jesus returned to Heaven. (True) 3. 100% RESPONSE TOOL: Saul was angry with Christians and persecuting them. (True) 4. 100% RESPONSE TOOL: Persecuting means grounding them from going out at night and not allowing them to buy bread? (False. It means hurting them really badly.) 5. 100% RESPONSE TOOL: When Saul was headed to the town of Damascus a bright light flashed around him. Saul was blinded. (True) 6. 100% RESPONSE TOOL: Ananias wasn’t afraid of Saul. (False) 7. 100% RESPONSE TOOL: Even though Ananias was afraid, he obeyed Jesus. Ananias went to Saul and healed his sight. (True.) 8. 100% RESPONSE TOOL: Saul went and was baptized and started eating again. Saul now loved Jesus too and believed Jesus is God’s Son and the One promised to redeem us. (True) 9. Volunteer: Do you have a story of how your commitment to Jesus Christ has cost you something? Maybe you used to make fun of Christians too. 10. Ask children how they feel knowing that God changes people and can change them too. How has God changed someone in your group?

Special Prayer Time “Let’s spend time in prayer. So we can focus on the Lord, let’s fold our hands and close our eyes. Thank you Father for loving us so much that you redeemed us. We are thankful that we don’t have to pay for our own sin but can be free and your child when we give our lives to You and decide to follow after Jesus. Help us to live like we belong to You and to show the world how great You are. Give us someone to invite to church so they can hear the truth too. In Jesus name, Amen.”

New Testament Mechanics Supplies: Bible, dry erase marker, list of New Testament Books. (If a child does not have a binder, collect the sheets for next week. If they have a binder, list can be inserted into binder.) Post all the books of the New Testament in order. For the second part of the mechanics: At least one set of NT boxes, list of New Testament books and a timer (a phone is good too.) Overview: You will finish up memorizing the books of the New Testament this weekend. There are children who know them very well and will want to show everyone that they do. Gently remind them that not everyone knows what they know. Attempt to spread out children to each group. Before you begin, you will review some fun facts. New Testament Facts:

1. The New Testament refers to the books that form the Scriptures of the Christian Church and records the life of Jesus Christ.

2. It consists of the second half of the Christian Bible, the first half being the Old Testament of the Bible. 3. The New Testament is the last 27 books of the 66 books of the Bible. 4. It has over 7,000 verses. (7,959 verses exactly) 5. The longest book is Acts. 6. The longest chapter is Luke 1. 7. Words occurring only once in the Bible: grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5); gnat (Matthew 23:24)

Instructions: Children will go to the New Testament boxes and put them in order. Divide them into teams assigning a volunteer to each team. Make sure each volunteer has a list of the books in order. Start the timer. Keep track of the number of requested helps. At the end add a second for each help. Team with the lowest score wins.

Memory Verse ReviewWhat’s Missing? Supplies: Verse cards, pencils, timer Romans 3:23-24 (ESV) “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” Instructions: Pass out the verse cards to each table face down. Set a timer for one minute. On go, they are to turn over the verse and fill in the blanks. When the timer beeps, say the verse all together.

Checkout Supplies: Word puzzles, coloring pages pertaining to today’s story, crayons or markers.


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the story of saul’s conversion to paul

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