Opening doors
Going into new situations and finding a welcome.
Show menu
Going into new situations and finding a welcome.
Discovering God is a new resource offering practical ideas for informal services and events. With a theme-based approach, this series can help create community and a sense of belonging.
Guidance on using Discovering God can be found at: www.rootsontheweb.com/dg-intro.
Here’s a way to introduce the theme.
Afterwards, talk about how your character behaved and why. What were they feeling? Act out the scene, if you like.
Before you end, come together to gather your thoughts and, if appropriate, to pray.
God, you come in disguises:
in a friend asking for a chat,
in a person asking for something to eat,
in all the ways people ask for help.
Open our eyes and ears to see and hear you,
knowing that when we respond to someone,
we are responding to you,
who always hears and loves us.
Amen.
These verses are part of a longer parable (a story told to illustrate a situation) about judgement, but they work on their own in the context of these materials to help convey that it is our small, often unnoticed, actions of helping others, in this passage feeding and clothing – that are important to God.
Show Antonia Roll’s picture, Jesus on the Tube, to set the scene for the reading in an ordinary, everyday place, where God is present.
In this extract from the parable, God – in the figure of a king – is explaining to his people that, by responding to others’ essential needs for friendship, food, clothing and shelter, they were also doing the same for him.
This passage focuses on how important it is that we welcome people and make them feel included. By doing this, we learn to see others as God sees them – everyone is valuable and deserves love and care. We should be open to welcoming and responding with compassion to others naturally and without making a fuss. It’s not a duty or a way of gaining points towards something. It is simply the way God wants us to behave towards each other.
Choose from these ideas to help people of all ages explore the theme together. Use the spiritual styles shown by the coloured letters to help cater for the different ways in which people connect with God.
Spiritual styles (as defined by Dave Csinos) key: Word, Emotion, Symbol, Action.
Find out more in Worship and learning support.
Talk about all the things we do to make the ‘right’ impression, in person or online. How does it make us feel? Does it work? What if, when we met people, we each saw the other’s characteristics and personality rather than their hair, clothes, etc.? What would we look like? Create a picture or model from craft materials and junk. How would new experiences be different?
Work in pairs of different ages. The older person gives advice and reassurance to the younger one about a situation they haven’t experienced yet and is likely to happen soon, e.g. changing school. The young person gives advice to the older person about how to do something they haven’t done, e.g. used filters on a photo, made a TikTok video, do a special dance move.
Give everyone a circle of material about 15cm wide and a piece of wool about 20cm long. Put out dishes of small things, e.g. marbles, craft ‘jewels’, wrapped sweets. In small groups, take it in turns to choose an item to represent a way you can boost your confidence before you go into a new situation, and talk to the group about it, e.g. believe you can do it, stand up tall, smile. Everyone then takes the same item and puts it on their material. When everyone has had a turn, use the wool to tie up the bags of confidence. Take them home as a reminder of confidence boosters to encourage yourself in a new situation.
If you can, find someone locally whose life has involved significant change, e.g. moving from one country to another, or often moving to new places. Invite them to tell their story – how they had to ‘open doors’, and who was on the other side when they went through. If the speaker is willing, allow people to ask questions. Invite everyone to take off their shoes and sit in a circle with all the shoes in pairs in the centre. Play some quiet music, and allow time for people to think about and pray for people who are on the move, constantly facing new experiences, whether they want to or not.
Ask everyone to sit down until they are invited to stand. If standing isn’t possible, give out a scarf to wave or something else to hold up. Say, ‘You are welcome if you are wearing red socks.’ Anyone wearing red socks stands up. Repeat with a whole range of categories such as ‘had toast for breakfast’, ‘have a younger brother or sister’, etc. The final category, ‘if you came through this door today’, ensures that everyone is included. Play the game again asking different people to think of the categories. Ensure that everyone is able to stand up by the end.
Ask everyone to think of a time they were new somewhere, e.g. a class at school, a job, an organisation or club. Where have you felt most welcome? What was it about the way you were treated that made you feel welcome? Share stories. Make a list of top tips for welcoming, either as a group or for a particular context. When can you put them into practice?
Remind everyone that God sees the tiniest act of kindness. Show this with a parachute game. Everyone sits around the parachute (or a large bed sheet), holding its edge and shaking it lightly to form waves. Roll a football underneath, labelled ‘kindness’, and ask someone, without shoes on, to crawl on top of the parachute and find the ball. Give several people a go, and then use a slightly smaller ball, then a tennis ball, then a table tennis ball, and then even a marble. Remind everyone that God sees and rewards even the smallest act of kindness done in his name.
Play a game to remind people that our preconceptions of others affect how we behave. Set small groups a task, e.g. plan a Welcome policy for an organisation they belong to. Before they start, put a sticky note with a characteristic on each person’s forehead so they can’t see it but everyone else can, e.g. ideas person, reliable, indecisive, always complains, leader. Start the task with everyone behaving towards the others according to what’s on the sticky note. After some time, ask people to guess what’s on their sticky note. How has this made you feel about how we are with each other?