John 13

Book of John: Chapter 13

Love one another (John 13:31-35)

"Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples."

Pass it onto your neighbour cards

You will need

Pass it on cards
Pass it on card instructions
Pens and crayons etc to decorate

Preparation

For younger children, you may want to prepare the cards for them and just let them decorate them
What to doGive each child a set of nine memory cards to decorate, and a piece of coloured card. Glue the sheet to the card. Then decorate the nine cards (see the suggestions below).
Cut out the individual cards. Let the children keep three each: One for themselves, and two for friends. Get them to give the rest to you, the leader.
Depending on the structure of your church service, the cards you have collected that the children decorated can be given out to the adult congregation, either in the service, or as they leave the service, or at morning tea.

Other ideas

Spreading hearts prayer
Fizzing hearts

Quick Questions

What do you think it means to be ‘given glory’?
Why should we ‘love each other’? What happens if we don’t?
Can you think of some examples of how you could ‘love each other’?

Gospel Conversations

This week we are given just a handful of verses from John's Gospel to ponder, yet the themes within them of Glory and Love could keep us thinking for the rest of our lives. Chris Holmes, Jenny Dawson and Anne van Gend join Michael Godfrey to get us started.

Game: Drop the Clanger

A game for younger children
You will need
Something to be the clanger. E.g. a saucepan, a set of keys etc something that makes a noise!

What to do

Get the children to sit in a circle. Ask for a volunteer.
Give the volunteer the ‘clanger’ and get them to walk around the inside of the circle.
They are to pick someone to join them who then stands up, holds the volunteer’s hand and continue around the circle.
The new person then chooses someone else who in turn gets up and holds their hand and continues around the circle making a long chain of people.
Meanwhile, the person holding the clanger is to choose when they want to ‘drop the clanger’. When they do, everyone in the chain is to run and sit back down in the circle. The last to sit down then becomes the person with the clanger for the next round.

Unpacking the story

In today’s story, Jesus was telling the disciples about what was going to happen to him at Easter. It sounded a little confusing didn’t it? (pause for answers) well; I think that it would have been confusing for the disciples too!
But Jesus did tell them something that was really clear: You must love each other, just as I have loved you. Can anyone tell me what they think that means? (Pause) Well, I think what Jesus meant was that we should treat other people how we would like to be treated. That means that if you like people to listen to you when you talk, then you should do the same when people are talking to you.
Can you think of any other times when it would be important to treat others the same as you want to be treated? (Pause)
Well, today we are going to make some pass it on cards to remind us to treat people how we would like to be treated. We might even make enough to hand out to people in church today!