About the Children's Department

Bright Idea Fall 1998

resources for effective children's ministry

This great "Bright Idea" was shared with us by Hank & Melinda Cannon.

My husband and I have been teaching children church for almost 2 years now. One of the exciting ideas that we had that really went over real big with the kids was a tithing game which we played. This game taught the kids the importance of tithing and also how much tithe God's word says is required and also teaches them how figure tithes out for themselves. Which is very important because alot of times kids don't receive the knowledge of tithing at home. The way we did this game is as follows:

A envelope of money was taped to the bottom of the chair before class. When time came to discuss tithes you would then ask everyone to look under their chair and see if they had a envelope marked tithe under their chair. Person who did have the envelope would open it and tell the class how much tithe they would have to pay from this amount of money. {For students who have trouble, we always tried to encourage the other classmates to help them out.} When they had successfully figured out how much tithes they owed then they had to put the amount of tithes due into a container marked tithes which would eventually be turned in to help with the support of the pastor.

Kids loved this game alot! However, we soon had to learn to add variety to this game and never do it the same 2 weeks in a row. Because kids are smart and they come into the classroom and look under the chair to see where the envelope is before having a seat. There are so many different ways to change this up some are as follows:

Number the chairs and place #'s in container to shake and draw from. Person with that # is player.
Hide the envelope somewhere in the classroom. Then have a time for the to search for it. The one who finds the envelope is the player.
Simply do names in a container to shake and draw from. Person drawn is player.
Have someone hold a number in their head and each child guesses within a number range. One who guesses # or closest to it is player.

The thing to always remember is let your imagination be creative and help you change it and make fresh and interesting every time. The results will be overwhelming! One of the greatest reports we had from doing this particular game was at our church Easter Egg Hunt for the Kids one of our children found an egg with money inside and automatically on their own they wanted to pay their tithes. How much more of a reward do we need. That's lessons in action!!!

Thank you Hank & Melinda for sharing this great "Bright Idea" with all of us!

If you have an idea that helped your ministry, please e-mail it to me at: Bright Idea! at dfreemansr@earthlink.net

or send snail mail to:

     About the Children's Department - Bright Idea!
     6618 Vinton Ave. N.W.
     Comstock Park, MI 49321

I will include as many as I am able to in future editions of About the Children's Department. Thank you for your help!

Table of Contents

About The Children's Department - Volumn 2, Edition 3

Copyright © Lynda Freeman
Last Updated Oct. 9, 1998
Web Page by Lynda Freeman
Send an e-mail to Lynda at dfreemansr@earthlink.net

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