3rd Grade Religious Ed: Kerygma

 Class 15 was supposed to be "Jesus Suffered and Died for Us," and Class 16 was supposed to be "Jesus Rises From the Dead."

Well, Class 15 got snowed out, and Class 16 was right before Lent, so I combined the two and went with "Kerygma!"

I put the word in a little treasure chest and told them I had a real treasure inside.  This was the treasure from the Treasure in a Field parable!

They made some guesses, and then I showed them the word.

The kerygma is the basic proclamation of the faith (which we acted out with our Easter cave):

1. The world is messed up because of sin- our turning away from God.
2. God sent his Son, Jesus to save us.
3. Jesus suffered and died to make a way for us to come back to God.
4. Jesus rose from the dead and calls us into His new life!

Really, everything else in the Faith is an unfolding of this basic nugget of truth.  Look at the Eucharist: it's a condensed version of the kerygma! It's Jesus coming to us in our sinfulness, offering his Body and Blood, making a way for us to be with Him, and for Him to give us His new life.

We also talked about Lent and Easter, the Church's annual 90 day kerygma fest.

Lent is a time to make space in our lives to pay more attention to our walk with Jesus.  We are walking with him during His time in the desert, praying, fasting, and giving.

I gave them a mini poster to color (we have a giant version at home).

The main idea is to color in a footprint each day, starting at the lower left cross, but they can also draw flowers around the footprints to represent the acts of love they've done that day. It's like a Lent calendar.

The cross itself is the symbol for Ash Wednesday (the first footprint is Thursday), and each Sunday is a picture relating to that Gospel (no footprints on Sundays).

Lent means spring: time to grow! So we checked the seeds we had planted to represent the Kingdom of God with the Mustard Seed parable. 

I think they might be blooming and ready to go home at Easter!

I had planned to do Follow the Leader as the game, but I ran out of time. 

We got a late start because I had car issues. My husband took the class while waiting for me, and he did the Gospel and a visit to the church to pray and see the new statues- which took the half hour I needed to get there!