Hi. We hope you enjoy catching up!
Welcome and thank you for joining us. If this is your first time at The Oak, hello, we hope you enjoy our time together today. We usually gather at our building but in these extraordinary times, we're gathering here online.
Our plan today is to start with a little news led by one of our leaders then to worship together at 10.30am with one of our worship leaders leading us from their home. After that, there'll be a short talk with some questions for you to look at on your own, in Life Group or as Oak Communities in the week ahead. Today's talk is about John 4 - find the full story here.
There are materials on this page for our 0-3's (The Nest), Reception to Year 6 (Treehouse) and Year 7+ (Oak Youth) to help the whole family grow together. More songs and resources for these age groups are available here.
We understand that the changes to home schedules mean you might not be able to join us for the whole morning. With this in mind, this page will be available during the week enabling you to use the resources when you can get to them.
Happy Sunday, see you at 10.30am!
News
Special offering
These are uncertain times. We are encouraged by churches all across the world (China, Ukraine, New Zealand amongst others) who have chosen to give of their own resources in uncertain times to the work of the church in their city and in the nations. Seeing photos this week of the churches in Ukraine handing out food parcels to local villagers alongside other photos of those they have been resourcing serving new communities in Nepal, India and Vietnam reminds us of the opportunity the church has to both invest in relieving the needs of those around us now and investing in the coming Kingdom in our nation and the nations.
We had been planning for Sunday 22nd and 29th March to be our big Special Offering to invest in a 'Treehouse & Families Worker' - to work with our families and develop our community work with children and young people. In light of the current circumstances we would like to do three things:
1. For those who have committed funds for this offering, have already given or were planning to give, please give this Sunday, 22nd March. We will set these funds aside enabling us to respond quickly at the end of this crisis with the ability to employ someone to serve children and young people.
2. We will delay the second offering (originally 29th March) to later in the year so the whole church can respond and give. As we return to public Sunday Gatherings at our building, we will take up the second part of this offering enabling the role to continue long term.
3. We are broadening this Sundays (22nd March) offering to include the ability for you to give specifically to a Care Fund - a fund we use each year as a church to respond to peoples needs. In the past this fund has met mortgage payments and larger impacting costs - costs that Life Groups and Oak Communities struggle to meet collectively can be met by the whole church Care Fund in emergency scenarios - we are not a bank but we are a community. We would like to give you the opportunity to give in to this fund for the coming months.
Let us know how you can help...
Ways to connect
Click here to see all our community WhatsApp and Facebook groups.
Also, check out the 7:7 Prayer Facebook page for ways to pray and serve one another in this season.
Family resources
You can view all of our resources by clicking here, including content from previous weeks, songs, videos and recommended books!
The NestEaster Week 1
0-3's
This week in the Nest we are looking at the story of what happened on Palm Sunday.
Verse ‘He is not here; He has risen!’ Luke 24v6
Book Five Minute Bible Stories by Fiona Boon & Hayley Down (pages 51-69) (see link here)
Songs All through history - Great big God - Jump around - 123, Jesus is alive (see the videos here)
Activity 1 Make palm leaves using green card/paper. The children can then decorate their leaves with crayons or by sticking tissue paper onto them. Talk with your child about how people put palm leaves on the road when Jesus came into the town riding on a donkey to show that He was the king who had come to save them.
Activity 2 Talk through this part of the story again using a toy donkey/picture of a donkey/donkey ears for your child to try on. Ask your child to put their palm branches on the floor or wave them. Talk about how this is what happened when Jesus came into Jerusalem. Teach your child to say ‘Hosanna’ and explain this means ‘Save’ which the people said to praise Jesus because He had come to save them.
TreehouseDaniel - the lions den
Preschool - Year 6
This week has been a time of huge changes, masses of uncertainty and possible worry for many of us. As we adjust to the news that we can’t physically meet as a church family and that our children will not be able to attend school / nursery for the foreseeable future it is great to be able return today to a story of God’s protection and faithfulness.
Today we are looking at our last story in our Astronauts and Aliens series, with the story of Daniel in the Lions’ Den. We really hope you can spend some time with your children explaining and discussing today’s story as well as spending some time in worship together and hopefully trying some of the craft activities we had planned to do together.
The Story
The full bible story is in Daniel 6. You might want to watch the relevant Vegetales episode (it's a musical!) (you can skip straight to 13.30, or 12.15 if you like the Waterbuffalo song).
If you have older children who want a version more close to an illustrated bible reading then you could watch this.
Worship
We have been singing ‘Shine’ throughout this series, and the children have also really been enjoying ‘Father You are King of Heaven’.
Perhaps you could award a prize for the best actions for the chorus!
Craft and activity ideas
Could you make a Daniel in the Lions’ Den picture / poster, try using a cupcake case as a lion!
Or you could decorate cupcakes to look like lions.
Can you build a lion’s den out of lego / duplo / mega bloks.
Or… could you make a den for your little lions (children!).
Ask (aimed at Treehouse Juniors - school years 3-6)
Discussion questions:
Why do you think the administrators plotted against Daniel?
Do you ever get jealous? How do you react?
Have you been worried this week? Do you think Daniel was worried when he was placed into the lions’ den?
God protected Daniel in the lions’ den. How could you ask God to help you at the moment?
Why not share what you've been up to on the Treehouse Parents Facebook Group?
Oak YouthUsing Social Media to access the bible
Year 7+
As Christians, we believe the bible to be words spoken to us by God. Put in a different way, we believe that the words on the pages of every bible were given to us by God directly and because of this, many people call the bible the Holy Bible.
This half term we have been learning some practical tools to help us access the bible. We have learnt to understand old maps, different translations, indexes, contents pages and concordances. This week we will be looking at the much more modern tool of Social Media to help us access the bible.
My hope is that once you understand there are different tools and ways for you to access the ‘words of God’, you will use them to gain knowledge and understanding of God to grow your own personal faith with Him and experience God for yourself.
Social Media is an excellent tool that can help you on your journey of faith as you read God’s word for yourself.
1. With your parents, why not search for a free bible app and upload it to your own or a family device now? I use Bible App by Olive Tree, currently,lots of others use YouVersion.
2. If you already have one, why not look up a prayer app and upload this?
3. You might also consider looking for some bible notes/devotional apps or bible verse apps for young people which you can use to get to know God a little more each day? I use ‘Daily prayer’, 6 verses a day with some background music.
4. Lets get a chat going in WhatsApp about which ones you have found the best? You might like to try a few before you find one that works for you?
5. There are so many social media platforms that fill our minds with all kinds of thoughts. Why not choose today to follow some Christians on twitter, Instagram or tiktok, maybe worship leaders from Newday, Bethel, Hillsong or Planet Shakers.
Philippians 4:8 is a great bible verse I memorised in school.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.
Why not have a go of meditating on it this week. You could put your new skills to the test by using the index, concordance, contents page or your new bible app to find it and learn and understand more about God.
God Bless, guys, you’re awesome. See you in group WhatsApp chat or on Zoom when we’re up and running.
Becks and the Oak Youth Team.
