Links:

• Planning for Lent
• All ages together in Lent
• Celebrating Lent and Easter
• Worship for Palm Sunday and Easter Day
• Lent and Easter ideas using pictures
• Kingdom Life in Mark (Lent/Easter studies)
• Good Friday at Kunnunurra
• A Service for Good Friday
• Another service for Good Friday
• The Witnesses
• Easter Vigil
• Planning for Palm Sunday and Easter
• Try this for a change
• Dialogue of Two Crosses
• A Palm Sunday Reading
• The story of two Palm Sunday People A Palm Sunday play (with props)
• A Tenebrae Service
• Another Tenebrae Service
• A Service for Maundy Thursday
• The Lord’s Supper and Footwashing
• Maundy Thursday Communion Service A Service for Easter Morning
• Another service for Easter Morning
• Planning for Palm Sunday and Easter
• Easter Reflections
• An Agape Meal for Easter
• Symbols of the Resurrection
• It’s Crazy – An Easter Play in Two Parts
• Worship for the Easter Season

Good families –
even great
families – are off
track 90 percent
of the time! The
key is that they
have a sense of
destination. They
know what the
“track” looks like.
And they keep
coming back to it
time and time
again.
- Stephen Covey

Link: YACMU Website

Link: Easter Ideas For Families (pdf)

For many families the fridge is the central place in the house, what better place then to place a resource that will engage the whole family during Lent. Lent is a season in the church calendar that many leaders, parents, guardians and other adults find difficult to approach with children, it is a time many of us feel is for ‘doing’ rather than talking about. I read an interesting article by Matushka Nadia Koblosh recently online and she said:

“Lent is a time to concentrate on life, on being human. Thus my struggle – with myself and my children – is to keep Lent from degenerating into something silly and petty – such as simply giving up candy or movies. The struggle is to cultivate and understand the revelation that there is something deeply wrong and sad about human life; that there is evil in the world and that this evil, subtle as it is, often enters into our hearts and minds; that we sin and are disobedient to God… To love God, just to learn to love God and understand and rejoice in God’s Word; to stand before God with humility – like the Publican in the Temple; to be tender-hearted and sensitive toward others and their sufferings; to understand that life is meaningless without Christ: this I think is part of the essence of Lent and what I strive to instil in my children.”

Reading this article I was inspired to take some time to pull together a resource that would assist adults working with children to really explore the message of Easter appropriately with children. So, Bec Wilson from the Victorian Tasmania Synod and myself have brought to you Experience Lent – a time for action with children. Bec has written a great resource for worship and I have pulled together this Fridge Faith Calendar for Families During Lent.

I hope that this Calendar will assist families in exploring Lenten traditions that they can conceivably fit into their already hectic schedules in a way that brings Christ closer and more deeply into family life. On this side of the calendar are ideas you can take up, explore, change, toss around together as a family and will ultimately give you some ideas for how to explore this time of Lent together.

Meg Everard
Ministry and Mission with Children and their Families
Board of Education, NSW Synod, Uniting Church in Australia

Link: Fridge Faith For Families During Lent (pdf)

Link: Grace Cube (pdf)

Apparently Dennis Morris, a photographer who toured with the sex pistols, was invited to give easter a visual makeover. The images use young people in various scenes to help reflect upon and enter into the Easter story.

The images are a part of the schools resource pack and can be downloaded for free along with the resource pack which can also be accessed as a pdf file for free from CMS. If you or your school or church want a hard copy of this resource you can buy it from the cms shop.

The resource is aimed at 7-11 year olds in the London diocese, so some of the ideas in the resource probably won’t be accessible for churches outside of London, so you’ll need to improvise a little, but the resource is still really handy and will provide other churches with activities and other ideas to help them explore the Easter stories…

Let us now if you do, in fact use these resources in Australia…

Link: Holy Week For Families

Check this resource out if you’re thinking about how we can talk about Easter, Lent and Holy Week with children this year.

This is so obvious that it’s easy to forget… ensure that children have made the connection that you are talking about the same Jesus who was born at Christmas time! Don’t assume that children will know this – for many children, programs run by the church at Easter and Christmas are the first time they have heard anything about the story of Jesus. Why should they know that the Jesus we talk about in Advent Workshops is the same Jesus we talk about in Easter? Remind them that although we celebrate the birth and death of Jesus every year, that he was actually alive for 33 years, and he did some remarkable things with his life! Tell some of the stories of his life – because his death only makes sense in the context of his life, and the things he did in his life are as important as his death.

It’s unfair to labour children with guilt about Jesus’ death. Telling children that Jesus died on their behalf, and that he carried the weight of their sins will be a burden that children will not know how to deal with. It is not watering down the gospel to tell children that Jesus didn’t deserve to die, but that because he did die, we know that God loves us more than we could understand. Jesus showed us that we don’t have to be scared of death, because we know that there is life beyond death.

Remember that children will not always understand the language and analogies that we use in church. They think far more concretely than what most adults do. What we understand as metaphor, children will understand as literal truth. Singing choruses that say Jesus will come again with a two edged sword will conjure very realistic and frightening images of Jesus chopping people’s heads off – it’s unhelpful and frightening.

Link: Beyond Butterflies

Where do we begin? This is my question as I think about working with children during Lent and Easter. While we are an Easter people with years of tradition surrounding that momentous day around 2000 years ago when the women emerged from the tomb having found it empty, it is still a season that is difficult to talk about with children.

Advent provides a joyful journey towards hope in the birth of Christ, it is comparatively a delightful time to work with children. Lent on the other hand, is a slow and hard journey towards the cross that is difficult to talk to children about. While it is always a good idea to be real with children, it doesn’t make it any easier to tell this story and answer the questions Christs death raises.

It might help us to remember that we do not need to have all the answers. It is okay to let children wonder about the story without providing a solution. It may be that our role is to create a space where children can enter into the
stories, a space where they can begin to form questions and to wonder about the place of these stories in their lives.

Link: Experience Lent and Easter with Children

This is a great resource for churches and Children’s Ministry practitioners wanting some assistance in working through Lent and Easter with children, craft ideas include building a green hill with growing grass for three crosses to sit on, building prayer stations, making your own cup to remind you of the last supper. Worship ideas include prayers, prayer station material and ideas, a sound scape to reflect on the Easter story and more…

Easter is About
A prayer by Lois Rock
Sourced from the Easter and Lent Resource Booklet 2007

Good Friday is about
Burdens loaded on
innocent shoulders
And nails hammered into
innocent hands,
A spear piercing an
innocent heart
And death enshrouding and
innocent life.

Easter is about
Unexpected and joyful
reunions
And simple meals
shared with friends,
Old grievances forgiven
and forgotten
And angels rolling wide
the way to heaven.

Link: Easter and Lent Resource Booklet 2007

A Retablos is a little picture shrine (holy place) containing a photo or drawing of loved ones or things that are special to loved ones. They enable people to keep the memory alive of those they have loved. Retablos is a Spanish word and they are very common in Mexico. The Lenten Retablos resource is a series of 5 lectionary based boxes again that house prayer stations that can be used by individuals, households or communities.

This is a great resource for families, Sunday schools, children’s ministry practitioners and would also suit youth groups wanting to reflect on the Easter and Holy Week stories.

Link: Lenten Retablos Material