Talks In Transit

This was week 2 of our series on Galatians: Faith, Freedom, and the Produce Aisle. Last week we focused on Galatians 1 and how Paul's own life communicates the radical nature of what faith is.

This week we focused on Galatians 2 zeroing in on Paul's confrontation with Peter and issues of circumcision. In the words of Michael Scott this week on The Office: Psych! Just reading/hearing about circumcision makes me cringe and giggle at the same time. Can you image what it would do to middle school boys!? Yikes!

No this week we continued to talk about what faith is by focusing on Galatians 2:20.

Intro

I got them into groups of 2-4 and had them work through this scenario: aliens have come to Earth where they find you and ask to talk to you about confusing words that we as humans use. Then giving them only about 30ish seconds to chat in their groups, I had them talk about these words: love, hate, popularity, beauty, weird, and cool. Then those same aliens know that you go to church and wanted to find out what these religious words mean to religious/spiritual people: worship, justice, gospel, kingdom, compassion, and faith

Transitioned by talking about our Big Idea from 2 weeks ago (which they couldn't remember...oh, and the couldn't remember that we were talking about the book of Galatians either. MSers really know how to encourage and give confidence to their leader/teacher! haha!).

Text

Galations 2:20: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Here (because of time I had to chop off a bit of content prepared) I focused on "...I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." I talked about this Jesus and his love - who and how/how much.

Then I showed this video to illustrate the how and how much. I struggle with whether or not to show this video (which is a fairly well done version of the classic "Bridge" illustration you may have heard or used before). The reason I struggle with using it is because it's fairly emotional and didn't want to manipulate the emotions of emotional middle school students. But in the end I felt like it really illustrated the how much of God's love for us. The illustration breaks down at many levels, but it communicates the how much very well (almost too well?).

Close

I walked them through the Big Idea: Faith is putting my life in the hands of Jesus who loves me and died for me so that I might experience real life (here and now and also yet to come for all eternity).