20 Dec Christmas at Our Church: Churchville, Va.

Annette Sites (right), Jerusalem Chapel, Churchville, Va.

Instead of exchanging gifts in the Middle School Sunday school class (and tempting ourselves with greed and bad attitudes), we chose to share a gift with the church family. During December, we studied God’s example of gifting and looked at our attitudes when giving and receiving gifts. To conclude our study, the students filled snack-sized baggies of “gorp” (peanuts, M&Ms, and raisin mixture) this week and stapled a message of Christmas greeting onto the bag. The students were then given the freedom to go out into the church parking lot, where they placed the goodie bags on car windshields.

Even in our giving, one problem occurred–we ran out of goodie bags before we ran out of cars! (Woops!) So, to remedy this situation we first took the goodie bags off of the pastors’ cars (since they are always showing us an example of servanthood). When that still wasn’t enough, the teens agreed to take the goodie bags off of their own family’s cars. A true sacrifice that wasn’t in the originial teaching plan.

When the class came back together to look at the story of the Three Wise Men, I took it a step further and talked about God’s gift–and sacrifice–in sending his son into the world to save us.

The students had fun, and there was not even a hint of a bad attitude. What a great Christmas gift for me and my assistant–watching the class learn and work together for God’s glory!

---

Tell us something special your church did during the Christmas season–events, programs, ministries, anything. You can use this form or send an email.