Trampolining in church!

Imagine kids and teenagers from age 3 to 15 running round your church hall, some jumping on a trampoline, some playing badminton and table-tennis, others drinking tea and the rest madly dashing round everyone else with a volleyball. Some are Russians, others gypsies, some from Central Asia, and all living in the poor area around the church.

Some are Russians, others gypsies, some from Central Asia, and all living in the poor area around the church.

This was our kid’s holiday Bible club week, run by seven students from our OM Discipleship Centre.

For four days we opened the church and invited children to join us for our ‘Sports Club’, and for three days we ran our Bible club based on Creation, the Fall and Salvation through Jesus Christ. Over half our Discipleship Centre students had never worked with children before and were leading games, teaching Bible verses and doing crafts for the first time in their lives.

Each day started with an hour of rowdy games normally involving balloons, chocolate or skipping ropes, followed by a Bible lesson and Bible verse for the children to learn off by heart. It was great  to see former drug addict Georgi sharing with the kids about how to ask forgiveness for the bad things they had done and how to believe in Jesus.

It was great  to see former drug addict Georgi sharing with the kids about how to ask forgiveness for the bad things they had done and how to believe in Jesus.

The children then had a chance to take part in four different clubs, including make-up, painting photo frames, origami, making book-marks and learning the guitar. Again it was surprising to see a 15 year old boy enthralled with making a flower out of different coloured tissue paper. After tea, sandwiches and biscuits, the children were invited to watch a cartoon based on the theme of the day, and then we opened the ‘Sports Club’ and the trampoline jumping began.

Several of the children and their parents had never been in the church before. Some came back from last year Bible club even though we haven’t seen them in-between. It was hard to leave on the last day as 15 children and teenagers were asking when they could come back and when we would be holding the next event. We would love to be able to open our church every Friday night for children and youth to come and have fun, get to know us better and so we could share more of our testimonies and lives with them.