This week's theme: Perseverance

Goals: To teach the children that:

1. The Bible is our guide for living

2. God wants us to not give up.

3. Even when life gets tough we need to serve God will all of our heart and with all of our energy.

Chef Skit:

The Swedish chef comes in to the room in a crazy and excited manner. He is making a cake; an angel food cake. He loves angel food cake. He just can't wait to sink his teeth into it. He busies himself preparing the cake. He starts to beat the egg whites explaining that it is the fluffy egg whites which make the cake fluffy and delicious. He beats and beats and pretty soon gets tired of beating. He gets incredibly agitated. He fumes and screams and gives up saying that it is too hard to make an angel food cake and it takes too long.

The leader tried explaining to him that he needs to persevere, but he just gets more agitated. Before long he is throwing things around and storming off in a huff of defeat. The leader then explains to the kids that God doesn't want us to be quitters. Sometimes life is going to get hard and we are going to feel like giving up, but God wants us to keep going. He wants us to persevere.

The Bible is full of stories that tell us how to live and what to do. The Bible tells us how important it is to persevere. There were many people in both the old and new testaments who never gave up in spite of the fact that life got really hard and quitting was a much easier solution.

Crazy Moose story: Cocoa the crazy moose pops out in the puppet stage with some caramels. He tells the leader that there was this really cool guy in the Bible who was on top of a mountain of caramel who never gave up even though he was in a pretty "sticky" situation.

The leader tells Cocoa that he must be talking about the prophet Elijah; only he was on mount carmel not a mountain of caramel. He was in a pretty sticky situation though, but not like caramel sticky.

The leader takes over and tells Cocoa the story of Elijah and how after he has defeated the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel he had to run for his life. The queen wanted to kill him and she was one mean and nasty lady. Things looked pretty bad for poor old Elijah. Tell about how Elijah got discouraged and wanted to quit. Life had gotten too hard. God didn't want him to quit. He sent Angels to feed him, let him rest a little and then revealed himself to Elijah and encouraged him to not give up.

Object lesson: you will need two 5lb. Bags of sugar or flour.

Ask a child to come up and old the bags in the air. As they hold them talk about perseverance and not giving up. The kids arms will tire quickly. Talk about how life weighs heavy on our hearts and makes life hard and tiring. We want to give up. It is at times like these that we have to keep pressing forward and trusting God. Call another child up to help the first kid hold up the bags. God will help us when we are tired and weary. He will give us strength. Also, he wants us to help others when they feel like giving up.

Cool Clyde's death defying double dare:

Forgetting the past and straining toward what is ahead, I keep trying to reach the goal. Philippians 3:13

Cool Clyde comes out to teach the memory verse. After teaching the verse he challenges the kids to his death defying double dare. This dare involves eating something really gross that he has cooked up. One child from each team comes up and takes the item out of Clyde's lunch bag, put it in their mouth and eat it and then recite the verse.

This week Cool Clyde has caramels.

Game: Blindfolded shape sorter game

Blindfold two players and give them each a shape sorter and an equal number of shapes. They must race to see who can get all of the shapes into the shape sorter the fastest. This is harder than it sounds when you are blindfolded.

After playing the game discuss the following:

1. Was it hard to fit the shapes in the right spots?

2. How do you think the players felt when they were struggling?

3. How is this like life? (sometimes life gets hard and we want to quit)

4. How could we have made it easier for the players? How can we make life easier for people who are struggling with life?

Game option two: Give each player 10-12 styrofoam cups. They must build a tower with the cups. If the cups fall they must start again. Encourage players not to give up.

Talk about how we need to keep trying even when we keep failing and want to give up.

Fish object lesson:

The Swedish fish comes out with an energizer battery. He has no need for it and so he wants to know if the leader would have any use for it.

The leader uses the battery to talk about perseverance. The energizer bunny on the commercials (download a picture) keeps going and going and going even after all the other battery operated toys have given up and quit.

We need to be like the energizer bunny. We need to keep going and going and going no mater what. When things get tough we need to trust God and not give up.