Mystery mnemonic

My boss decided to while away a few moments yesterday - this was the result:
Being faithful, God freed captive believers hardening low-down Pharaoh.

What is it you ask??? Yes, that is indeed the question! It's designed to be a helpful mnemonic - but can you work out what it's supposed to help you remember?
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Need a clue?
Which crucial Bible event does it refer to?
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Need another clue?
There are ten words in the phrase. Can you think of ten cataclysmic things linked with this Bible event?
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Want the answer?
It's a way of remember the Ten Plagues in order:
Being Faithful, God Freed Captive Believers Hardening Low-Down Pharaoh.
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Blood, Frogs, Gnats, Flies, Cattle, Boils, Hail, Locusts, Darkness, Passover.

Aren't you glad you know that?!

News at Teen

If you're a youth or children's leader, stop for a moment and think of three words that sum up your group...

Now compare those words with the ways young people are increasingly represented in the news:
'A study published recently by Brunel University analysed how youngsters appeared in more than 2,000 television news programmes over a month and found a very bizarre picture. In 82% of news stories featuring young people, they appeared either as the perpetrators or the victims of crime, usually involving violence. For the non-crime stories, the most typical reason for showing a young person was as a celebrity.'

I wonder if you came up with 'thug', 'victim' or 'celebrity'. No? But that's how most young people are portrayed these days.

The quote above comes from a BBC News report , which goes on to say:
'The author and social commentator, Frank Furedi, sees this anxiety-ridden depiction of teenagers as a sign of deeper fault lines in society ... When all other adults and other people's children are seen as a threat, he says it means that the adult generation withdraws from any contact with young people - and bringing up children is "privatised" to the parents. Without any communication between the generations, adults become fearful and distant towards the youngsters hanging around, he says. In return, young people grow up starved of the influence of adults. "It means that adults are leaving the life of children. It's completely unnatural." '

If young people are increasingly growing up 'starved of the influence of adults', that makes our role as youth and children's leaders so important. I see two challenges here - to ourselves as leaders, in a position to 'influence' young people and with a resonsibility to do this well, and also to find ways to introduce other adults in our church or neighbourhood to the young people we know and love, so that they can see that they're not all thugs, victims or celebrities!

Eggciting

The following is an Easter idea I was given by a schools worker years ago. It works well with children, but could also be easily adpated for use with teens. You need an eggbox with six Kinder eggs in it (the plastic clip-together inserts – you can eat the chocolate!). The eggs are hidden around the room. You ask the children to find one egg at a time, at which point you open it and find what’s hidden inside it – then put the egg in the eggbox. I no longer have the original list of contents, so here’s one I’ve made up (I’ve suggested more than six, so that you can choose the ones you prefer):

• Nails (Jesus was nailed to a cross of wood and left there to die)
• Strip of cloth (The cloth that was wrapped round His body)
• Empty (A reminder of the empty tomb)
• 'Happy Easter’ sticker (The resurrection and why we celebrate it)
• Sad face (How Jesus’ friends and families felt on Good Friday)
• Crown (Jesus was God’s promised King, but He wore a crown of thorns)
• Dice (The soldiers played dice to get the cloth Jesus wore)
• Mini Scroll (These things happened exactly as God has said they would)

You don’t know which order the eggs will be found in, so you adlib accordingly. Then show all the eggs again at the end, in a helpful order, to summarise what you’ve been teaching. The eggs and contents will be quite small of course – if you have a large group, maybe you could use an OHP to throw up the silhouettes of what you’ve found so that the children can see/guess what they are.