Picture the scene: you're frantically getting ready for your youth group Christmas party. You're looking for party games to play with your young people. You turn to the internet to look for Christmas party games for youth fellowships. It's great to find youth group resources with a Christmas theme.
Here's a game we used as a mixer at our youth group Christmas party on Sunday night: Christmas Name Bingo. It works the same as normal Name Bingo - each person has a sheet, a pen, and about ten minutes to find people to sign their sheet, if the boxes apply to them. Each person can only sign one box on the page. You might like to have a prize for the most boxes signed by different people.
I've previously reviewed another similar book from James Montgomery Boice - The Christ of Christmas. In it, Boice's Christmas sermons were shared, but in this volume, The Christ of the Empty Tomb, Boice turns to the other great festival of the Church: Easter.
Boice was a great preacher, with clarity of thought, superb illustrations, and life-changing application, all of which shines through in this volume of Easter sermons. They are collected into four main sections: New Day Dawning; The First Lord's Day; He is Risen; and Our New Day; and even from those titles you can see the arrangement of material and the scope of the sermons.
There is something for everyone in this very helpful book. For the sceptic (skeptic?), there is a careful examination and explanation of the events of that first Easter Day at the empty tomb. For the new Christian, there are encouragements to grow in faith and confidence because Jesus is risen from the dead. For the seasoned saint, there are plenty of encouragements to keep going and keep growing. For the pressured pastor, there are ideas and illustrations that may be a launchpad for an Easter sermon series; new angles and interesting details to stop and consider; fresh fodder for the preacher.
Above all, the book is an exciting reminder that the heart of our faith is the fact that Jesus is alive and reigns, that death could not hold him, and because of this, nothing will be the same again. Check out the promotional video from the publishers:
Recently, I received a review copy of a new outreach course from The Good Book Company, designed particularly for 'non-booky' people. Tales of the Unexpected consists of four short sessions, using some of the parables of Jesus from Luke's Gospel to help people understand the gospel.
The study guide is great, with each session laid out almost like some older Sunday School material, with questions, the Bible text, summaries of the teaching, and interactive sections and quizzes to aid in remembering the stories. With very little work, the study guide could also be used as the basis for a discussion group, with time given for people to follow along and fill in the books as they go along.
As I've said, the course has been designed for non-booky people, and it wouldn't intimidate people, with the great design in the study guide, and everything is at a basic but good level. Ideal for non-Christians, or even new Christians as an introduction to studying the parables, and coming to grips with some of the varied ways that Jesus is portrayed and teaches.
Alongside the study guide, there is also a DVD which contains a short advert to show in church before the course begins, as well as the four sessions. These are presented by Pete Woodcock (who authored the course with his wife, Anne), and Lizzie Smallwood. There's a choice as to which person you watch, as they each present the same material, so depending on the group, you can use whoever is more suitable. However, I'll have to take their word for it, as the DVD didn't want to work at all in our MacBookPro. I've tried it a few times, and each time it has just spat it out again without playing.
Hopefully if the DVD works, the course would be a great one to run, perhaps alongside or prior to a Christianity Explored course, and will make a good complement to the outreach programmes and evangelistic courses in a local congregation's calendar, or home group.
