Scripture: Acts 10:1-11:30
Learning Objectives:
- Students will learn God wants everyone in the world to become a Christian.
- Students will learn we are to share our faith with everyone – even if they are people we don’t particularly like.
- Students will learn early Christians helped Christians in other parts of the world when there were disasters like famine.
- Students will compare and contrast characteristics of various animals.
Guiding Question: Why does God want us to share our faith with everyone?
Materials: Bibles, paper, pencils
Procedure: Review the story of Cornelius. Remind students that many of the early Christians in the New Testament helped other Christians when they were experiencing difficulties. Explain that talking/working with/helping other Christians can be easy most of the time because you both share the same beliefs. However, God wants us to also interact with and share our faith with everyone including those we may be different from or do not always get along with well. God loves these all people, even people we do not get along with or have difficulty loving. We have to remember that God may place these “difficult to love” people so that we have the opportunity to share our faith with them through our words and actions.
Introduce the activity. Have the students examine animals on the Old Testament clean and unclean list. Have the students find what they have in common and what is different about them (most answers can be found in Leviticus 11). Do students have any theories why various animals might have been unclean?
Additional Questions: How can students learn about different animals all over the world?
Supplemental Activity: Have students research various habitats and presentation about the different types of animals in each habitat.