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Adam Walker Cleaveland

Free Epiphany Lesson from our Lectionary Curriculum

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FREE EPIPHANY LESSON: Click here to download your free Mini Revolutions lesson for Epiphany.

Illustrated Ministry’s Mini Revolutions is a weekly lectionary-based curriculum. Hundreds of churches around the world use this curriculum resource, and we’ve received positive feedback from folx who are using it with their communities.

Epiphany Lesson

You can use Mini Revolutions as your traditional Sunday School curriculum, in a one-room Sunday School model with mixed ages, or in an intergenerational setting. You could also take the content and adapt it for youth ministry and other ministry programs and settings.

Mini Revolutions can be implemented as a completely virtual, hybrid, or in-person experience—endless options are available to suit your needs. Lead as much or as little of the content as you like. Each section of Mini Revolutions is simple and requires just a little prep to have a meaningful experience with your group.

Free Epiphany Lesson

Included in this downloadable PDF lesson is:

  • Scripture: Matthew 2:1–12
  • Questions: Imagining and wondering questions that are open-ended and connect more deeply with the scripture.
  • Look It Up: We highlight a moment in history, an interesting fact, or a person who made an impact that connects with the scripture’s theme.
  • Two activities: We provide a fun mix of activities that help participants think creatively about the scripture through building and design, earth care, social justice, self-care and compassion, social/emotional learning, science, technology, and art.
  • Micropractice: A simple practice/ritual anchored in daily activities to help form healthy, spiritual, and mindful habits, with access to a graphic you can share with your community through social media.
  • Coloring page: The coloring page includes an illustration of a short phrase from the selected scripture that invites reflection on the scripture.
  • Bible Story Booklet: A child-friendly paraphrase of the scripture, accessible for all ages, with colorable illustrations that help tell the story.

This free lesson for Epiphany will help give you an idea of what our Mini Revolutions curriculum is like, and perhaps you’ll want to consider signing up for our monthly subscription to Mini Revolutions.

To download the free Epiphany lesson, click here.

For more information, and to purchase a monthly subscription to Mini Revolutions, click here.

Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy

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We’re excited to share with you a FREE Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy! We know going back to school this fall will be such a big deal after a long stretch of being apart, and we want to provide you with resources to celebrate and mark this occasion.

Our worship liturgy includes a Call to Worship, Opening Prayer, Blessing of the Backpacks Liturgy, Prayers of the People, Closing Prayer, and a Benediction.

To download our FREE Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy, click here. You can read more information below about our backpack tags and why we wanted to create this resource for you this year. And if you want to share this resource with others, click the share button below. Thanks!

For the past four years, Illustrated Ministry has created illustrated tags for the Blessing of the Backpacks. Many churches participate in something like this as part of their back-to-school traditions. This year, for our fifth backpack tag design, we are excited to share our “Be Loved. Be Kind. Be You.” Backpack Tags.

Be Loved Backpack Tag

These backpack tags have been extremely popular, and we’ve seen customers use them in incredibly creative ways.

  • Some churches printed out the tags in color and laminated them to make luggage tags for backpacks, suitcases, briefcases, purses, and more!
  • Others used the design to make shrinky-dinks that they turned into keychains for folx in their congregations.
  • Some even used the illustration and made buttons for their community.

Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy

Each year, we also receive many requests from folx for a written liturgy for their blessing of the backpacks. This year, we’ve created one! But with all that you are planning for the academic year, we wanted to gift you with more than just a blessing of the backpacks liturgy; we included additional elements that you may wish to include in a back-to-school worship service.

We’ve all had to deal with disruptions that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to all areas of our lives, but especially to our education system. And many have had to deal with virtual learning and other pandemic precautions that made last year unlike any other school year. Going back to school this year is going to be a big deal.

There will be teachers meeting kids in person they’ve only seen over Zoom. Students will be seeing friends and classmates they’ve only known over Zoom and through online discussion boards. We’ll all have to figure out what it’s like to get back to some of our regular activities. And many will have questions: Am I ready for this? Will I be safe? What’s it going to be like to be around so many people again?

As you plan your Blessing of the Backpacks this year, we hope these additional components from this free resource will ease your planning and help you find ways to name and reflect on this huge adjustment throughout the worship service. Whether it’s in the Call to Worship, the Prayers of the People, or the Benediction, this free resource provides you with options that are ready to be used in your service.

If you’re ready to download our Blessing of the Backpacks and Back-to-School Worship Liturgy, click here!

BACKPACK TAG DESIGNS:

If you’d like to see the various backpack tags we have (in English and Spanish), you can check them out below.

Back-to-School Worship Liturgy

Prayers for Marking a Year of COVID-19: Free Coloring Pages

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Prayers to Mark COVID-19

Prayers to Mark COVID-19

As churches and communities begin to look for ways to mark the passing of time during COVID-19, we thought we’d put together a set of prayers and coloring pages to help with that process.

It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since COVID-19 changed the world as we knew it. As we brought our kids home from school and college and tried to figure out what Zoom worship looked like (it will only be for a few weeks, right?), we had no idea the amount of time we’d be staying home, the number of people who would die, and the toll the pandemic would take on our bodies: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve started seeing Facebook posts and memes about “Where were you this time last year?” when COVID-19 first started to change our lives drastically.

It’s been over a year since we’ve been together, seen our friends, shared hugs, and experienced the joy of community. And we know that churches, schools, and other community groups are trying to find ways to help people mark this passing of time.

We asked our team of writers to come up with some prayers to help communities mark this year of COVID-19, and we created a set of three coloring pages that go along with these prayers.

This is a free resource, so please feel free to share it widely. Unlike our purchased materials, you can post these free coloring pages on your website and make them available publicly.

FREE DOWNLOAD: Click here to download your free set of coloring pages to help mark a year of COVID-19.