It’s always good to have everyone back together after a weekend apart (last weekend was the MAD Man service trip)!  We had a bigger crowd than normal, which was fun.  A couple reminders; yesterday was the deadline for signing up for the middle school winter retreat and the senior high ski trip.  Here’s the breakdown of what we studied and some follow up discussion ideas:

The middle school kids continued the series from Mark Oestreicher’s ‘Wild Truth Bible Lessons‘.  Chris Z taught the lesson on Solomon, the key verses for the lesson can be found in 1 Kings 3:16-28.  The goal was for students to be encouraged to make good decisions, as well as identify a decision they have to make this week and list the consequences of different choices.  Some follow up activities could be to read the passage in 1 Kings together and use the following discussion questions:

• What’s the best decision you ever made?  What’s one of the worst decisions you ever made?
• What’s the last big decision you made?
• What’s a decision you need to make right now that you’re having a hard time deciding what to do?  How could Solomon’s example help you make the decision?

I taught the third of six lessons in our series working through Galatians.  I’m using The Complete New Testament Resource, Volume 1 from Youth Specialties as a launching pad for the series, which has been really helpful.  This week the focus was on Galatians 3:15-25 with the topic of ‘Is heaven for rule keepers?’  The goal was for students to understand the difference between Old Testament law and the promise of God.  What I loved in particular about this passage is that the Apostle Paul makes a compelling case that salvation has always been by faith, not works, using passages entirely from the Old Testament and the life of Abraham.  A follow up activity for families would be to read the Galatians 3:15-25 passage and use the following discussion questions:

• How much should a follower of Jesus Christ be focused on following the commandments and rules of the Old Testament?
• How much of your Christian life-experience is based on keeping rules?
• What is God’s promise (as opposed to the written laws of God)?
• How is it we’re held prisoners of the law?  How has our faith in Jesus freed us from the constraints of the law?