HOOK CHURCH HOLIDAY BIBLE CLUB - AUG 17 - JONAH
This year at Hook Church we had a wonderful Holiday Bible Club: it ran from Tues 29th - Thurs 31st August, 9.00am to 12 noon; the theme for the club was Jonah. We had around 70 children each day and over 20 leaders from within the fellowship. It was encouraging that half of the children who came to the Holiday Bible club were not connected to Hook Church in any way beforehand.
Prior to the club a number of Church folk were busy preparing crafts, writing a drama, preparing actions for songs and sorting administrative stuff. We also decorated the church building with 168 fish in the conservatory and a whole host of sea creatures on the walls in the sanctuary; the piano was disguised as a ship.
Each day we had a set format of: an introductory craft in 6 groups, some songs and a Bible verse.
A favourite song was 'Super Saviour'.
Our Bible verse was: ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not of yourselves, it is a gift of God’: Ephesians 2v 8: in this photo we are unscrambling the verse using clothes on a washing line.
We then had an separate teaching for Rainbow and Spectrum -aged children, with an associated craft: following through the story of Jonah, looking at - listening to God, being given another chance, and the grace of salvation that is offered to everyone.
A new addition this year was, for 1 hour each day, the children chose to do an activity: either Forest Craft, where the children could have tremendous fun climbing trees, making mud pies and roasting marshmallows over a fire.
Football, where they had a lot of fun and learnt a number of new skills.
or Performing Arts, where they all performed the story of Jonah: getting on the boat with Jonah to Spain [Tarshish], one girl explained that she was going to Spain to get a tan. We then saw Jonah being thrown into the sea, praying from 'inside the big fish', and then Jonah going off to Nineveh. The people of Nineveh finished saying ' We are sorry', then 'God forgave us'.
Each morning finished with a daily serial story, a messy challenge-game, a quiz and a song.
Then, on the Thursday evening, we invited all of the children and the parents to a presentation of what the children had been doing during the Holiday Bible club mornings – along with a fish and chip supper, which we bought from Hook Fish and Chips. Though we bought many fish and chips, we ended up having 2 fish and 5 bags of chips left over!!
We were delighted that nearly all of the families returned for this and they were able to see the Performing Arts kids acting out the Jonah story and also listen to the children sing their favourite Holiday Bible club songs – including a song written by Ivan a number of years ago: ‘God said ‘Go!’ but ‘No!’ said Jonah’.
There was also a dynamic feedback about the Forest Crafts activity, demonstrating a ‘wigwam’ structure they had created; for the Football activity, each child (and leader) was presented with an individual football certificate, mentioning a particular area where they had improved over the 3 days.
As leaders we were thrilled to be involved in this week and it was such a wonderful opportunity to share the good news of the Bible with many non-church families of the surrounding area.
Thank you to everyone for your prayers and practical support. Once the leaders have recharged I am sure the thoughts will be looking at what the holiday club can be in 2018.
Forest Craft roasting marshmallows.