Our Story

Activity

Jesus was looking for a quiet place to pray. What is your quiet place to pray? Do you pray in the early morning like Jesus did, or do you pray in the evening before bed? If you have trouble thinking about prayers, the 5 Finger Prayer is a good place to start.

Activity

In today’s story Jesus heal’s Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and when she gets up she “serves” them. The word in the Bible for ‘serves’ is the same word for ‘ministers’, so Simon Peter’s mother-in-law ministered to Jesus and his followers?

What does that word mean? Isn’t minister the person in front of the church leading worship? Yes, today that is the person we call the “minister”, but in the days of the Bible the word ‘minister’ was a verb, not a noun, so there was no one called a minister, instead many people took on the responsibility of ministering to each other, or serving each other.

Ministering/serving wasn’t only making sure people were fed, it also meant that people saw doctors if they needed to (yes, there were doctors in Jesus’ time), talked to lawyers, had enough money to buy what they needed in the market, educated the children and new believers. So many jobs.

What are the jobs around the church that other people are doing? Do you see the people picking up the money to make sure we can pay our church bills? Do you see the person who cleans everything? Do you see the person who teaches Sunday school, or plays music for worship, meets people at the door? All of them are called ministers. All of them serve each other in the church.

If someone asked you to be a minister in the church, what job would you like to do? Talk about it with your family or act it out with your siblings or toys.

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