Last Sunday we ran a joint youth event with St Margaret’s Angmering and St Peter & St Paul’s Rustington called iWorship. The purpose was to hang out, have a meal and worship together allowing a chance for the youth to get to know young Christians from the other churches. It was a great event and we had a lot of fun together.

During the meal, we placed an image with corresponding scripture relating to some part of Jesus’ life onto each one of the eight tables. The young people were encouraged to read the passage while they ate. Later, as part of our worship together everyone was asked to reflect on that scripture and image, then to write or draw their personal thoughts about the passage onto post-it notes and stick it down.

Once everyone had a chance to finish, we laid out the eight images at the front in chronological order. Suddenly the young people could see a pictorial timeline of Jesus’ life and how their particular passage fitted into it. They were also able to read the various responses they had all written to what Jesus had done for them. At Christmas time, rather than just focusing on the birth of Jesus, we wanted to give them something of the significance of His life and why therefore we celebrate Christmas.

As an exercise in creative worship, it worked really well and might be something you can try with your groups throughout the year. I’ve prepared the images and scriptures we used as a download for you to print out and adapt. You can download it here (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader).

These are the eight points in Jesus’ life that we used:

• Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:1-20)
• Jesus as a boy (Luke 2:41-50)
• Jesus is baptised (Mark 1:4-12)
• Jesus calls his disciples (Mark 1:14-20)
• Jesus’ miracles and teachings (e.g. Matthew 14:22-33)
• Jesus is transfigured (Mark 9:2-9)
• Jesus’ death (Luke 23:32-47)
• Jesus’ resurrection (John:1, 11-17)

And these are some of the responses the young people wrote:

It’s all about Jesus coming into the world and how the saviour of the world was born from such poverty

It’s not always easy to follow Jesus. It can be a rocky road. we need to trust Him and have faith like Peter to step out of the boat.

Jesus picked normal people, NOT people who would usually be leading or have high respect in society

Thank you for calling me! Help me to be a fisher of men