This Easter Sunday we are planning a Resurrection Praise Celebration.  We are splitting the teaching into two halves – in the first half the preacher will show a giant paper world, and talk about how God created everything perfect.  He will then rip the world into pieces, talking about how we have sinned and ruined God’s perfect creation.

He will then ask what we should do with this ripped world – throw it out and start again?  This is probably what we would do.  But God is in the business of re-creating his broken world.  And he did this by sending Jesus as a baby at Christmas (we want to make the connection for those who only come twice a year!)

We will then explain that we are going to have a time of worship, where the children and anyone else who wants to can colour in a piece of the broken world, whilst everyone else sings some songs, to symbolise us joining with God in remaking his broken world.  At the end these pieces will be collected in, and a couple of people will begin to stick these pieces to a cutout of the resurrected Jesus (we are cutting around a projected image of the Rio de Janeiro ‘Christ the Redeemer’ statue, to make a life-size MDF silhouette).

The second half of the talk will unpack these verses from the Message Version of Colossians 1:18-20:

“He [Jesus] was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.”

We will explain that we are going to join in the ‘Resurrection Parade’ that Christ is leading by having our own little parade behind our cut-out of Jesus, who has now been covered in the colourful pieces of our world, stuck back together on him.  The band will play something celebratory as people who want to follow the figure around the church.

Feel free to steal or adapt this idea, or let us know what you've got planned or have done in Easter's past!
 

Sam co-leads engageworship.org with his wife Sara. He completed the LST degree in Theology, Music and Worship, and co-leads RESOUNDworship.org. He also works part time as Worship Minister at St James, Hemingford Grey, and has led musical and creative worship at events like Spring Harvest, New Wine North and the Baptist Assembly alternative stream.

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Ruth Neve

20 Apr 2009 11:57

 

We slightly adapted Sam's idea for our Easter service - using the introduction, ripping a picture of the world which the children coloured in during the sermon on being an Easter people (and many other ripped maps). After the talk 'Christ the Redeemer' was brought forward and we all said the Colossians passage together - then sang some songs with the risen Christ stationary at the front - due to its large and heavy base. A carpenter in our church had made such a fantastic, freestanding, almost lifesize copy of Christ the Redeemer that I spent some time the following week fillling in the gaps with colour printed, ripped maps and He now stands resplendent in our entrance, fully visible from the street, greeting all who enter - The Message passage is prinited and laminated on the wall beside the 'statue' so all can understand the symbolism. Great idea!

Sam Hargreaves

20 Apr 2009 20:21

 

Thanks for this feedback Ruth! We actually ended up doing a similar thing - we didn't 'parade' the figure around the church (partly because we'd already done a parade on Palm Sunday, and also because our church is half-full of scaffolding!)