Elevate

Hey Kids and Teens… Help Needed!

Hey kids, Dave here!

I’d like your help with our online Sunday services. Are you up for the challenge? Here’s some ideas about how you could help…

Record a Video

Could you do our welcome? You’d say something like, “Hello everyone, welcome to Exeter Vineyard’s online service. Today we are going to __________.”

If you’d like to do this, let me know and I can tell you what you need to say for the week.

If you don’t want to do a video of yourself, you could always do something creative, like the Iron Man video above. I know your Lego minfigs can’t wait to be involved!

Tell a Story

I know lots of you are amazing at cartoons or stop-motion animation or other in countless amazing creative ways. Maybe you could tell us a story out of the Bible?

Draw a Picture

Could you draw a picture of something that will help us think about God? It might be based on a verse from the Bible, or an idea about who God is, or a scene from Jesus’ life? Or something that represents God?

If you also wanted to record a quick video talking about your drawing that would be really great too!

Say a Prayer

Could you record a video of you saying a prayer? Then everyone watching can say Amen with you. It’s really helpful to have someone lead us in prayer.

 

TIPS FOR FILMING

You can record your video on any smartphone using the selfie camera or, if you have someone to be a camera-person, on the normal camera.

The most important thing is the sound quality. Record in a quiet environment – it’s amazing how a phone microphone will pick up a washing machine, vacuum cleaner or people in the background. If you try to do this outside even a breeze can drown out your voice, so, unless it’s a really still day, it might be better to be indoors.

The video will be shown landscape so it’s best to turn your phone sideways. Try to be somewhere with good lighting. And don’t sit directly in front of a light source or you’ll be a silhouette.

If you’re filming yourself you might want to find somewhere to lean your camera so you don’t have to hold it. It will look best if you can have the camera at eye level.

Start the phone recording and wait a couple of seconds before talking. Same at the other end; leave a little gap. Otherwise we can end up with a video that starts when you’re halfway through a sentence.

GETTING THE FILE TO ME

The video file will be too large to text, email, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to me (or it will sent, but be massively compressed).

So please use a file transfer service to send to my email. The easiest might be to get the app “Smash: File transfer” on your phone. This allows you to add the file and send to my email address ( dave (AT) exe.vin )

Alternatively you can use the website WeTransfer, which does the same thing without installing an app.

If you find you get stuck with the file transfer, get in touch

Elevate TFTW – Sat 18th April

Week 4

We are following through the story of Jesus and the early church in the Bible Project’s playlist, the Luke-Acts Series.

This is the final week of Jesus’ life. Here are some questions you could think about?

Q1. Why were the religious leaders so angry with Jesus? What was it they feared losing?

Q2. How did today’s story make you feel?

Elevate TFTW – Sat 11th April

 

Week 3

We are following through the story of Jesus and the early church in the Bible Project’s playlist, the Luke-Acts Series.

Today you’ll need a paper Bible, as we’re going to flick through chapters 9 to 19 of the Gospel of Luke.

Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem is packed with incidents and teaching.

Find Luke 9 in your Bible. Modern Bibles are split into sections with headings; this is done by the publishers of Bibles to help people find different events, stories and themes in the Bible.

We’re going to flick from Luke 9 to Luke 19 and look at the headings. You’ll probably recognise many of the stories from the headings, but some may be new to you.

In your family look at one of the sections together. It may be a favourite story about Jesus, or some of Jesus’ teaching. Or it may be a section you don’t recognise, but would like to examine further.

Read through the section and think about what is going on. Think about how it fits into the story Luke is telling, as we’ve been hearing in the Bible Project videos and the themes Luke keeps highlighting.

Here are three simple questions to ask about the section you’re reading:

1 – What does this tell us about God/Jesus?
2 – What do we learn about the world and people?
3 – What do we learn living as a Christian in the world?

The Prodigal Son

The video features one of the most famous parables that Jesus ever told – the Parable of the Prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32.

One really interesting aspect is the reaction of the older brother at the end of the parable. He feels the whole thing is desperately unfair – his younger brother has gone off and done everything wrong and is now getting a party, while he has stayed and done everything right… but no one is celebrating him.

We can probably understand why he’s so upset!

The issue seems to be his understanding of what’s going on and what’s important. He thinks it’s all about what we do, while the father thinks it’s all about having relationship.

The older brother has done everything he’s supposed to do, but he thinks of this as his work – chores that are a duty – instead of it being part of the family.

This is really easy for us to do with our faith. We think the Christian life is about doing the right things (and not doing the wrong things) so God will reward us, instead of thinking it’s really about being close to God, and because of this we live a certain type of life.

Are there aspects of being a Christian that you think are a bit like doing your chores? Or perhaps it’s choosing to not do certain things that it feels like other people get to do?

Think about why you feel like this. How might you think again about these things to understand them in terms of family-relationship with God, instead of ticking off your jobs.

Elevate TFTW – Sat 4th April

“Thought for the Week” is a suggested activity that families can do together. It will take about 20-30 minutes to work through this and gives families a chance to think about God, apply ideas to our everyday lives and pray together.

For our young people in Elevate and Elevate+, we are following through the story of Jesus and the early church in the Bible Project’s playlist Luke-Acts Series.

Week 2

Questions:

Reaction to the video
What did you learn from the video? What hadn’t you thought of before? What aspect of the story so far has caught your imagination?

We often read the Bible in snippets. Do you enjoy thinking about Jesus’ story in order? This is also showing how what Jesus did fits into the bigger story of the whole Bible. Do you find this interesting and helpful? Why?

What we learn about the world?
What does this video tell us about how the world works? One of the ideas featured in the video is how Jesus pulls together a group of diverse people to be his disciples. Why is this different from how the world usually works? What sort of modern-day people might be just as shocking to work together?

What we learn about God?
The video talks about people dedicating themselves to God’s purpose. If God is all powerful, why do you think he wants people to be part of his work? What does this tell us about God and what he thinks of us?

What we learn about living in the world?
What can we learn from this video about what our lives are for? What might living a life like that be like? Would it be hard or easy? Why? What would you find difficult about this ‘radical’ way of living?

 

Prayer

Ask what you could pray for each other.

Jesus says we should love and pray for our enemies. You may not have actual enemies (or maybe you do) but how could you pray (and love) people you normally wouldn’t think of treating like this.

Pray that you would start to see and understand the place God has for you in the world and how you could dedicate yourself to doing his will.

Action

This video talks about baptism as a way of dedicating yourself to God. Our plan, Coronavirus situation permitting, is to do baptisms on the 19th July. If you haven’t been baptised, perhaps you might want to think about whether this is something you want to do. Perhaps pray and talk to your parents and friends about this.

What way can you, this week, do something to contribute to Jesus’ mission statement that he read out in the synagogue (Luke 4:16-21). What could you do to be good news to someone this week?

 

Elevate TFTW – Sat 28th March

“Thought for the Week” is a suggested activity that families can do together. It will take about 20-30 minutes to work through this and gives families a chance to think about God, apply ideas to our everyday lives and pray together.

For our young people in Elevate and Elevate+, we are following through the story of Jesus and the early church in the Bible Project’s playlist Luke-Acts Series.

Week 1

Questions:

Reaction to the video
This is what we think of as the Christmas story. It’s something we know really well, but was there anything that you hadn’t really thought about before? Perhaps something that usually gets missed at Christmas time? Why do you think this might not get included in the normal Christmas retelling of the story?

Whether it was unexpected or not, did anything jump out at you? Perhaps an idea that grabbed your attention or part of the story captured your imagination. Share what this is and why it stood out.

What we learn about the world?
What does this video tell us about how the world works? What things and principles were at work in Israel when Jesus was born that are still going on in our world today? Some might be good and some might be bad. What does this video tell us about what God thinks of these things?

What we learn about God?
What does this video tell us about God? Which of his characteristics are evident in this story? Can you think of something in your own life that shows any of these characteristics of God?

A central part of the story is how unexpected it was that God chose Mary and the circumstances of Jesus’ birth. Do you sometimes feel insignificant or unimportant compared to people around you? What is that like? What do you think God thinks about you at these times?

What we learn about living in the world?
God’s idea of what is important or significant is often upside-down when compared to the world’s ideas. Can you think of things that the people around you think are really important, but aren’t really that important at all? How easy is it for us to get drawn into the world’s ideas? What might be different in the way the world reacts to the Coronavirus situation than how God would want his people to react?

 

Prayer

Ask what you could pray for each other.

Considering God’s upside-down kingdom, pray for people who might be really struggling because of their circumstances in the Coronavirus situation.

Pray that you would have eyes to see God’s unexpected and unusual activity and opportunities this week.

Action

This week, what could you do to live out this God-principle of the upside-down-backwards kingdom? Maybe you could encourage someone who feels insignificant or worthless? Or you could help someone who is struggling? You could commit to pray everyday for a certain situation? Tell each other what you plan to do, so they can ask how you got on.