Mar
12

Fundraising Tips

Each year we do 2-3 fundraising drives to help fund our operations so we aren’t just reliant on fees from the boys. Typically we consider the following:

  • Entertainment Books – these books consist of great value coupon deals that are valid for a year. 20% of the sale price of the book goes to our fundraising with the remainder covering the costs passed onto Entertainment Publications. Entertainment suggests handing a book to each member and getting them to either return it or the money for it – however I don’t think this is the most ethical way given our demographics.
  • Pie Drive – who doesn’t love pies? Each winter, family size pies are a great seller amongst the boys and church. As well as pies we have slices & lamingtons. We make a percentage of each pie with the remainder paid onto the supplier.
  • Chocolates – at times if we need additional funds we consider doing a chocolate drive. Chocolates are a typical fundraising method and depending on the brand can yield up to 50% profits.
Mar
12

People who met Jesus through the book of Luke

Term 1, 2011 saw us undertake a series through the book of Luke focussing on people who met Jesus and their reaction to him. Here is a series outline and some attached studies:

Who Jesus Met Passage Summary of Passage
Demoniac #1

Luke pt1

(or a person in the crowd)

 (Luke)4:31-37

“Jesus heals a man with an unclean demon”

 A crowd is listening to Jesus teach and are already amazed by his authority.
A demon-possessed man interrupts, with the demon yelling out at Jesus. He even identifies Jesus as ‘The Holy One of God’. Jesus repsonds by commanding the demon to be silent and leave the man. It did.

Everyone was even more amazed at the power/authority of Jesus words. News spread.
Disciples

(Simon-Peter,
James or John)

 5:1-11
“Jesus Calls the First Disciples”		 Some fisherman had given up after fishing all night with no catch.
Jesus tells them to put the nets out. They trust him and get a miraculous catch.

Peter is convicted of his sin by the mere presence of Jesus, who he now knew was from God.

Jesus tells the disciples they will now be fishing for me. They leave everything and follow him.
Leper

Luke pt3

 5:12-16 A man with leprosy (painful, ceremonially-unclean and socially-outcasting skin disease) came up to Jesus. He demonstrated faith by saying ‘If you want to, you can make me clean’. (Which is true for us and our sin too!)

Jesus shows he cares and is able to heal – he heals him immediately and instructs him to get ceremonially clean so he can participate in community again.

News spreads more, crowds follow but Jesus stays committed to and focused on God.
Levi 5:27-32 Levi was a tax collector (dodgy sold-out to the romans steals from his own people kind of guy)

Jesus meets him and demands he leave everything and follow him.

Levi does just that. (Good response) In fact, he throws a generous feast for Jesus at his home.

The Pharisees didn’t like that Jesus was partying with ‘sinners’.

Jesus teaches them about why he came and for whom he came to call.
Zaccheus 19:1-10
“Jesus and Zaccheus”		 Zaccheus was a cheif tax collector. Despite his dodgy ways he wanted to see Jesus. He was short, but determined to meet Jesus so he climbed a tree.

Jesus looked up at him and invited himself to Zaccheus’s house.

Zaccheus received Jesus joyfully. The Pharisees grumbled that Jesus hung out with sinners.

Zaccheus demonstrates his repentance and faith. Jesus says: “Today salvation has come to the house, for he is also a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”
Woman in the crowd   or
Jairus (daughter)
or   Servant from Jairus		 8:40-56
“Jesus heals a woman and Jairus’ daughter”		 Jairus came to Jesus, fell at his feet and asked him to heal his 12 yr old daughter. Jesus agrees and starts the journey to Jairus’ house.
On the way a woman came to touch Jesus clothes. She did it because she had faith it would heal her (she was ceremonially unclean from her bleeding and couldn’t live a normal life)

For onlookers benefit (he already knew) Jesus asks who touched him. The woman eventually admits and Jesus tells her how her faith has made her well (But it was also Jesus’ grace!)

Jesus makes it to Jairus house too late to prevent the girl dying. Mistake? Not so much. Everyone gives up (a contrast of the faith of the sick woman) and Jesus raises her from death.
Martha and Mary 10:38-42
“Martha and Mary”		 Martha and Mary met Jesus. Mary ‘sits at his feet’ which is what disciples did to their rabbi to listen to them teach. Martha is busy with all the work to be done and complains to Jesus.

Jesus teaches how Mary has chosen what is more important – a close walk with Jesus.

(The point isn’t that we neglect our responsibilities, but rather we serve out of our relationship with Jesus, and not be too busy doing ‘good things’ to spend time with God)
Pharisees 11:37-53

“Woes to the Pharisees and Lawyers”

 Bit of a show-downbetween the Pharisees (religious leaders who made sure everyone followed the law) and Jesus. The Pharisees have been criticising and grumbling since Jesus started drawing crowds. One invites him to dinner and then blasts Jesus for not following the ceremonial cleanliness tradition. Jesus unleashes and pronounces ‘woes’ (not a curse, but an expression of grief and sorrow at them)

This explains in detail how Jesus feels about religious hypocrites

(will take a bit of explanation of the OT laws etc)
Rich young ruler 18:18-30

“The rich ruler”

 A young rich ruler asks Jesus what he needs to do to get into heaven, or ‘inherit eternal life’.
Jesus challenges the definition of ‘goodness’ and explains how only God is good.

Jesus points to the commandments as the standard of goodness. The ruler says ‘Check!’

Jesus then ups the standard and says ‘now give everything you have to the poor and follow me’

The guy goes home sad because he loved stuff more than Jesus (and obviously hadn’t kept the first or tenth commandment either).  Crowd figure… if this guy isn’t good enough, who can get in? Jesus teaches it’s impossible for us to get in on our own, but possible for God to save us.

The disciples and Jesus discuss how following Jesus comes at a cost but it is always worth it.
Mar
12

Big Words

In term 4, 2011 we looked at Big Words that are in the Bible and exploring what these actually mean.

A video we used from Youtube made a great intro to the series:

 

We then explored the following words:

Week 1 – Righteousness

Week 2 – Worship

Week 3 – Grace

Week 4 – Rependance

Week 5 – Faith

Week 6 – Covenant

Week 7 – Reconciliation

To help get started on an understanding of the word, the following was helpful:

http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/bakers-evangelical-dictionary/

Jul
02

Messy Games Night

We had a great messy games night to end term 2 of Boys’ Brigade. We thought we would list them here as a resource for everyone:

  • Heads & Tails – arrange into two teams sitting opposite one another, each team should hold hands. The leader and the first person on each team have their eyes open, rest closed. The leader flips a coin – if heads the teams squeeze hands along the chain, with the end person tapping the ground. The first tap wins and gets to splash the opposing end person with water. The winning team then rotates. If tails, the teams do not squeeze. If the teams squeeze falsely, the other team gets to splash the end person, but no-one rotates. To make it messy we used sticky water.
  • Jelly dip – make a large jelly and put a prize in it (e.g. $5), each person then has 10 secs to attempt to get it out using only their teeth, before the next person gets a turn. It rotates until the prize is retrieved.
  • Cheezel darts – cover one persons face in something such as whipped cream or shaving cream. The rest of the team then throws cheezels at the face and scores a point for each cheezel.
  • Picnic floater – a large container of water with some yellow food colouring is filled. Some picnic chocolates are then floated in the water. This game is a fun activity similar to apple bobbing, where the people get them out using mouth only.
  • Not my hands – the aim of this game is to get ready for a day but with someone else being the hands. We used flour, sauce, cocoa as make up, someone else fed them breakfast. Another fun game that is messy!
  • Blended breakfast – as per the name, common breakfast items are chucked into the blender and made into a drink for them. We used various cereals, bread, jam, egg, maple syrup, vegemite, salt, sugar, milk, juice – in the future would probably avoid the vegemite & egg as it smelt bad when mixed…
  • Spaghetti elbows – this is a relay race where they transfer cooked spaghetti and tomato sauce between buckets using only their elbows. No carrying the bucket
  • Olive challenge – Ice cream cones are made for everyone in secret, however one of them has a surprise of an olive in the bottom of the cone. Whoever gets it has to eat it. Can be done with pickles or random things like that.
  • Messy mural – using the leftovers from each of the activities, the groups make murals about something and need to justify/explain it. A challenge ingredient is always interesting.

Enjoy!

Jun
23

Bible Lessons for Juniors Section

The last 2 terms we have been using the book “The Big Book of No-Object Object talks” by Tim Simpson as a launchpad for our Bible Lessons. This series are bite-sized lessons running through themes such as God’s love and salvation.

The lessons are designed to not need additional materials apart from the notes but to be relevant to the upper primary school age group, so far we have found them to be a good series each having a memory verse for the boys to remember. Each week if the boy remembers the memory verse they get a lolly-pop and after 5 memories a great prize!

Dec
19

Jesus: All About Life

So in term 4, the seniors section did a series launching from the Jesus: All About Life campaign that was in Sydney in September/October. The series was written by the Bible Society and was a well made look at Jesus’ life and what is said about things in life. The series covered the following topics:

  • What’s Jesus got to do with my life?
  • Jesus & the good stuff
  • Jesus & the ugly bits
  • Jesus: a new start
  • Jesus & where it’s all headed
  • Doing life with God

The series is based on the book Jesus. All ABout Life by Murray Smith (2009) and a resource file by Bible society. There are a series of well made videos available on youtube and direct from the Bible society for free in DVD quality, here are some below:

Jesus & the good stuff

Jesus & the ugly bits

Jesus: a new start

The series received great feedback from our group and the way that the lessons are structured makes it great for a devotional setting such as Boys’ Brigade!

Sep
29

NOOMA

So throughout this term we have been doing a series based on the NOOMA DVD series by Rob Bell. They are a great series that handle issues we all need to talk about. Our term programme has looked as follows which has worked with our group:

  • Name
  • Rich
  • Bullhorn
  • Rhythm
  • Store
  • Open
  • Noise
  • Sunday

The series has been good at bringing to light topics in a creative way and the discussions are always interesting that flow from them. The included booklet with the DVD is useful in providing quotes and discussion starters.

Sep
22

Book of Jonah

So earlier this year we did a series based on the book of Jonah. A great tool that I found for doing reading the passage to the boys was a series of Youtube videos that follow the ESV pretty closely. After this we went through the passages and pulled out key concepts we wanted to portray each week, as follows:

Week 1: The hypocrite Highlighting God’s command, then Jonah’s response, then how the sailors prayed and responded despite not knowing God, before Jonah was rescued by God.

Week 2: The prayer Jonah’s prayer then God answering

Week 3: The Ninevites God repeats his command and Jonah does it this time, the people respond in prayer and God answers.

Week 4: The response Jonah complains, God’s lesson to Jonah, God’s challenge.

Sep
19

Roll ball along paper

Name: Roll ball along paper

Author: Andrew Scott

Aim: To roll a ball from one spot to another using only A4 paper

Materials:

  • One A4 paper per person
  • One heavy ball (eg baseball)
  • One bucket

Process: Give each person one piece of paper, everyone must use one hand to hold each short side of the paper, forming a U shape with it. The ball must roll from one spot into the bucket and must always be in contact with one piece of paper. When you have the paper you may not move the paper or yourself – only tilt the paper. It needs to be transferred from paper to paper to get into the bucket. If the ball is dropped or someone breaks a rule, start again. Could also work with teams versing each other.

Sep
19

Ball Pickup

Name: Ball pickup

Author: Andrew Scott

Aim: For the group to pick up varying sized balls off the ground and hold at least 50cm off the ground in control

Materials: Balls of varying sizes

Process: The group is given balls of varying sizes and asked to race other teams in getting all the balls off the ground. They must start sitting cross-legged and hands are not allowed to be used for anything (including standing up). Start with just one ball per person for them to pick up and can be increased to make more difficult.

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