A Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren told them, “In every life there is a terrible fight – a fight between two wolves. One is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion.” A child asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?” The elder looked him in the eye. “The one you feed.”
Which one do you feed?
Materials
1. A list of items commonly associated with Easter
2. A large sheet of paper, flip chart, or a whiteboard for each team. (Classified ads also work if you use a broad tip marker.)
Activity
1. Each team selects a person to draw.
2. The person leading the game showsthe first item on his list to all those who are drawing.
3. Each returns to his/her group and tries to get the group to guess the name of the item by Drawing / Sketching ONLY.
4. No Speaking, No sound effects, especially no humming, and no gestures are allowed.
5. As soon as the group knows the item, they must write it down on a peice of paper for you to check.
6. They send the peice of paper and a new person to you.
7. If the item is correct you give the person the next item to draw.
8. The first team to complete the entire list wins the game.
Easter items related to the Biblical account:
Gray fleece or donkey (Matthew 21:2-5), Palm branch or a coat (Matthew 21:8-11), A vial of perfume (Matthew 26:7-13), A lock of hair (Matthew 26:7-13), 30 silver coins or 3 10-cent coins (Matthew 26:14-15), A strip of terry cloth fabric or towel (John 13:4-11), A communion wafer or bread (Matthew 26:17-29), A communion cup or grape (Matthew 26:17-29), , Praying hands (Mark 14:32-42), A watch (Mark 13:37), Rooster or a feather (Luke 22:61)
, Piece of rope (John 18:12), A leather whip (John 19:1), Small piece of soap (Matthew 27:20-24), A piece of scarlet cloth (Matthew 27:28), A crown of thorns (Matthew 27:29), A cross (John 19:16-22), nails (John 19:16-22), Dice (John 19:23-24), darkness or Black circle (Luke 23:44-45), sponge with vinegar (John 19:28-30), spear (John 19:32-37), A shattered or split rock (Matthew 27:51, 54), Purple cloth (Matthew 27:51), Clean linen cloth or gauze (Matthew 27:57-61), Spices (Luke 23:55-56), A stone and wax or paraffin (Matthew 27:65-66), an empty tomb (Matthew 28:5-8), Sign reading “King of the Jews”
Easter items NOT necessarily related to Biblical account:
Basket, Bells, Bonnet, Bunny Hop, Candies, Chicks, Chocolate, Chocolate Rabbit, church, Cottontail, Daffodil, Easter Card, Easter Egg, Egg Hunt, Egg Tree, Faberge, Hard Boiled egg, Hot Cross Buns, Jelly Beans, Lamb, Lilies, Marshmellows, New Clothes, Parade, Passover, Pastel Colors, Peeps, Pretzel, Rabbit, Ribbons, Spring, Straw, Sunday, Sunrise
Easter CollectionGet more than 80 creative ideas for planning a Youth Easter celebration or Easter Party. You can immediately download my best Easter Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Easter activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!
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The story is told of a monastery in Portugal, perched high on a 3,000 foot cliff and accessible only by a terrifying ride in a swaying basket. The basket is pulled with a single rope by several strong men, perspiring under the strain of the fully loaded basket. One American tourist who visited the site got nervous halfway up the cliff when he noticed that the rope was old and frayed. Hoping to relive his fear he asked, “How often do you change the rope?” The monk in charge replied, “Whenever it breaks!”
Source: Daily Walk, March 30, 1992
Icebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next LevelThis 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.
Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!
Materials
Large bag of Easter Jelly Beans and a roll of paper towels. Jelly Beans should be in equal numbers for each color.
Game Preparation
1. Form two teams and assign each team one or two colors of Jelly Beans. You can have as many teams as you have colors of Jelly Beans.
2. On the floor at one end of the room, unroll a several foot long strip of paper towels. Spread the Jelly Beans randomly over the entire length of paper towels and then have the teams line up at the other end of the room.
Game Objective
The objective is to be the first team to remove all the Jelly Beans of their assigned color.
Game Play
1. One at a time, team members rush to the paper towels, and bend down and use their teeth to pick up one Jelly Bean (team colors only and no hands allowed).
2. Once they have a Jelly Bean in their teeth, they stand back up, run back to their team.
3. They must then show the candy in their mouth to the next person in line, who shouts out the color.
4. If the color’s wrong, the person must eat the candy and then go back and get another peice of candy of the correct color. When the color is correct, the person eats his/her candy and the next person goes to the paper towels and repeats the process.
Variation
Combine this with Jelly Bean Salvation for a fun Easter Gospel presentation.
Easter CollectionGet more than 80 creative ideas for planning a Youth Easter celebration or Easter Party. You can immediately download my best Easter Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Easter activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!
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A friend was in front of me coming out of church one day, and the preacher was standing at the door as he always is to shake hands. He grabbed my friend by the hand and pulled him aside.
The Pastor said to him, “You need to join the Army of the Lord!” My friend replied, “I’m already in the Army of the Lord, Pastor.”
Pastor questioned, “How come I don’t see you except at Christmas and Easter?”
He whispered back, “I’m in the secret service.”
Icebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next LevelThis 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.
Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!
Originally printed in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) this is a medically and historically accurate account of the physical death of Jesus Christ. It contains illustrations and walks through the events of the crucifixion from a medical perspective. Don’t miss it!
Click here to download the adobe acrobat PDF file [1.25 megabytes in size] from the website
Source:
“On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ”
William D. Edwards, MD; Wesley J. Gabel, MDiv; Floyd E Hosmer, MS, AMI
Reprinted from JAMA – The Journal of the American Medical Association
March 21, 1986, Volume 256
Copyright 1986, American Medical Association
If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can get it for free from here:
Download Acrobat reader
Easter CollectionGet more than 80 creative ideas for planning a Youth Easter celebration or Easter Party. You can immediately download my best Easter Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Easter activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!
=> Tell me more about the Easter Collection
The tale of the centurion
The sky was dark, gloomy, ominous.
A blackened canvas, awaiting a storm.
We had spit upon his face.
Blood and spit dripped down his body,
like rain off a tattered jacket.
He struggles to remain conscious,
His body is beaten, shredded, disfigured…
The braided whip, pieces of iron and stone, unleashed their fury.
Left behind–hanging skin, quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.
His brow is punctured, dripping,
A pool of blood beneath him, a crown of thorns upon his head.
He stands and stumbles,
Dizzy in the center of the raging storm of hatred.
His eyes strain to focus, the blur of faces,
The jeering voices rising in thunderous commotion,
Cursing, mocking, taunting.
Seizing him, I spin him around and crack my fist upon his face.
Open wounds, stripped, naked, bleeding.
I push him to the rocky ground,
Stones embedding in his wounds…
I drag him, sideways to rough, splintered timbers,
His arms, stretched and held.
A spike at his wrist…
A hammer raised–Clank, Clank, Clank…
The timber raised, this man of Galilee upon it…
He had promised life, healed the wounded, took away pain,
But now, his life was draining, his body wounded, engulfed in pain.
Yet, with compassion in his eyes,
Not anger, not hatred, but compassion,
He looks…
He’s looking at ME, his executioner…
As if waiting?
What to do?
To look away, or look at him.
“How can I, a Centurion, believe?”
“Come down off the cross if you’re the Son of God!”
He still looks,
Compassionately, waiting,
What to do?
“Speak to me! Say something?”
…..Nothing…..
The crowd thins as the sky darkens,
“Come with us, don’t waste your time!”
“He’s no more God than you or I!”
I stand, speechless, agonizing…
…then…
As a child to his parent he says so tender,
“Father, into your hands my Spirit I give,”
And at that moment he is no longer.
The earth shakes, the thunder bellows,
“Run you fool, forget the wretch”
I can’t, can’t move, can’t budge.
Fall to my knees,
“Surely, this MUST be the Son of God”
Copyright 1988 by Ken Sapp
Free for non commercial use.
Easter CollectionGet more than 80 creative ideas for planning a Youth Easter celebration or Easter Party. You can immediately download my best Easter Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Easter activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!
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Congressman Gary Franks (R., Conn.) recalls one thing he learned in college that was not on the curriculum:
I remember taking copious notes and listening to everything the teacher had to say in preparation for my first test at Yale. I looked at the exam and saw it was everything I had studied. I wrote the answers to the three questions thinking, Boy, this is easy!
As we waited to get our tests back I was positive I’d get an A. Instead my grade was a C. Under it, in big red letters, was written, “I know what I said. What do you think?”
It was a valuable awakening. I realized that Yale did not simply want you to absorb ideas but to think about them and challenge them. It forced me to explore things from every possible angle, looking for aspects that might not be obvious at first but were helpful in developing a dialogue on an issue.
In the same way, it’s not enough to simply know what Jesus said and did; we must personally appropriate his finished work by deliberately putting our faith in Him.
Source: Reader’s Digest, June 1996, p. 33.
Materials
Scissors, a set of balloons for each team (Different colors to distinguish teams), paper, marker and trash bag to hold balloons.
Game Preparation
Write an Easter Bible Verse on a piece of paper paper, then cut it up into a puzzle (The number of pieces will determine how many balloons you will need). Use the same number of pieces for each team. Place each puzzle piece into a separate balloon (you probably will have to roll the puzzle piece up), blow the balloon up, and then put the balloons in a trash bag for holding and preventing them from getting mixed up.
Game play
Pick teams and give each participant a balloon (with a puzzle piece in it) In this relay race, particpants run down to a chair and pop balloon and retrieve the puzzle piece. When the team has collected all the pieces, they must put them together and find the special Easter message… First team finished is the winner.
Easter CollectionGet more than 80 creative ideas for planning a Youth Easter celebration or Easter Party. You can immediately download my best Easter Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Easter activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!
=> Tell me more about the Easter Collection
It is said that two kinds of birds fly over the California deserts: the hummingbird and the vulture. All the vulture can see is rotting meat, because that is all he looks for. He thrives on that diet. But the hummingbird ignores the carcasses and the smelly flesh of dead animals. Instead, he looks for the tiny blossoms of the cactus flowers. He buzzes around until he find the colorful blooms almost hidden from view by the rocks. Each bird finds what it is looking for.
What are you looking for? Better still, what are you finding? What you are finding tells what you are really looking for. Your expectations of life will determine your outcome. If you come to church looking for a blessing, you will find one. If you come to church looking for a fault or an excuse for staying home the next time, you will find that also.
When you leave church with the great expectation and desire to worship and serve God during the week, you will find what you are looking for.