LEADER PREPARATION
Lesson Summary:

Note: These lessons are designed to be 30 minutes long. If your club time is shorter than this, we encourage you to be prayerful about parts of this lesson to put more or less emphasis on. If limited on time, we urge you to prioritize Tool Time and summarize Dig In, as Tool Time is what prepares you for sharing the Gospel. As always, let the Holy Spirit guide your leadership.

Jesus provides us a way to see God’s love through His words and actions!

This week, choose from one of the following options for DIG IN:

• Have a Student Leader share the Gospel message using something they’ve created, found, or by using the provided Gospel presentation below.
• Have a Student Leader share their testimony. They can use these questions to help guide their thoughts:
  • “How did my thoughts and actions break the life rules God established?”
  •  “How have I experienced God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness as I choose to reflect God and not myself to others?”
  • “Has the new life God offers through Jesus changed my life?”

Main Point
God made His home with us through Jesus.

Team Roles

Host: This Student Leader will lead the Start Up section of the lesson, helping create a fun environment, making everyone feel welcome and included.
Speaker: This student leader will guide the group in growing deeper in their faith by reading and reflecting on passages of scripture. They will then connect the content to the group’s daily lives by asking practical questions and leading the conversation.
Other Roles: Promo, Welcome, and Follow Up. 

Scripture References

• Luke 15:11-24
• Matthew 9:20-22

Materials Needed

• Red Thread
• Chairs
• Blindfold
• Prepared Gospel Presentation or Student Testimony
• First Priority Bibles
• Student Response Cards

(7 minutes)
Say: Welcome to First Priority. As we start this new year, we are so pumped that you chose to be here with us!

Icebreaker Game: Blind Laser Maze
Supplies Needed: Red thread, chairs, blindfold

Game Preparation: Randomly scatter chairs around the room. Starting on one side of the room, connect every chair to each other using one line of red thread. This will create the “Laser Maze.”

Ask for two volunteers. Instruct one to put on the blindfold and the other to stand at the opposite end of the room (keeping the laser maze between them). Explain that the blindfolded volunteer must cross the entire laser maze, WITHOUT bumping into any chairs or thread, using only their partner’s voice as guidance. Their team is eliminated if the blindfolded student touches the “laser” or a chair. Begin play and repeat with other teams of two volunteers as time allows.

Ask: This game is so much fun, but what we learned can also apply to our lives. What were some of the things that you faced as the one who was blindfolded? How about as the one who was the guide? (Take a few moments for students to share.)

Say: When you are blinded by your own mistakes or desires, you can rely on the voice of Jesus to guide you safely through every challenge and obstacle.

(5 minutes)

• Option 1: Student Leader shares Gospel message (sample provided below).
• Option 2: Student Leader shares testimony.

Option 1: Gospel Presentation Sample

Say: It’s easy to picture God as a friend who won’t forgive us for our mistakes. The Good News or Gospel tells us that God is not like that. Today, we’ll discover that despite all the times we have chosen our own ways over His, He still pursues a relationship with us. No matter what you have done, God invites you home to a restored and joy-filled life here and for eternity.

You may be thinking, “I’m not even sure that there is a God. How could I have betrayed Him?” Or maybe your question is more like, “After all I’ve done that I knew was wrong, how can God really forgive me?” Let’s look at a story Jesus told to address both questions.

Read Scripture: There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate. So he divided his property between them. (Luke 15:11-12)

Say: In those times, the younger son’s words would have not only been hard for the father to fulfill but would have been a major insult. Since most of the son’s eventual inheritance would probably have been in land, livestock, and even employees, the father would have to sell a portion of his holdings to give the younger son money.

Ask: How would you feel if one of your sons said that he valued your financial wealth over the relationship you had with him? (Take a few moments for students to share.)

Read Scripture: “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country, and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.” (Luke 15:13-16)

Say: You may or may not like pigs, but for a Jew, working with pigs was a hated job. It indicates how hungry and desperate the younger son was that he accepted the job. And to add insult to injury, he couldn’t even eat the slop the pigs ate.

Read Scripture: “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.” (Luke 15:17-20a)