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 intentionally crossed every boundary that people had created to share God’s love and forgiveness.

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

1. Have a Student Leader share the Gospel message using something they’ve created, found, or by using the provided Gospel presentation sample below.
2. Have a Student Leader share their testimony. They can use these questions to help guide their thoughts.
   1. • “How has Jesus’ reaching out to sinners changed my life?”
      • “How have I experienced God’s love, mercy and forgiveness through Jesus’ meeting me where I was?”
      • “How did my inviting God to make his home in me change my life?”

Main Point
Jesus reflects a God who loves people we may label as unworthy of His love.

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

• 1 John 1:8-9
• Galatians 3:26-28
• Matthew 11:19

Materials Needed

• Two Large Tablecloths (Alternatives: Blankets, Sheets of Butcher Paper, Tarps)
• Prepared Gospel Presentation or Student Testimony
• First Priority Bibles
• Student Response Cards

(7 minutes)
Say: Welcome to First Priority. As we experience the reboot of a new year, we are so pumped that you chose to be here with us!

Icebreaker Game: Shrinking Islands
Supplies Needed: Two Large Tablecloths (Alternatives: Blankets, Sheets of Butcher Paper, Tarps)

Spread the sheets on the floor with a large space between them. Divide the group into two equal teams. Ask the teams to stand around the two “islands”. Explain that the team will have 5 seconds to get every member of their team on top of their island. If any teammate has a foot off of their island at the end of that 5 seconds, they are eliminated from the game.

Here’s the catch: The “islands” will be folded in half every round, making it progressively more difficult for the teams to fully gather on them. The team with the most students still on their island after 5 rounds is the winner. Continue the game past Round 5 if there is enough space on the “islands.”

Say: Great job finding ways to keep your island mates safe! Helping one another is always a win in this game and in life.

(5 minutes)

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

Option 1: Gospel Presentation Sample

Say: Have you ever noticed how people have a natural talent for dividing into groups? When we’re kids, we play boys versus girls on the playground.

In school, we split up based on the level of classes we take or the clubs and teams we join. From the beginning of time, humans have divided ourselves into groups of “us” versus “them” based on family, ethnicity, social status – you name it. Within our group, we feel safe. Outside our group, we feel vulnerable.

These boundaries we draw around ourselves cause so many of the world’s problems. Wars are fought, and people are enslaved and mistreated based on their group. On a more practical level for us – have you noticed how hard it is for people to relate across these lines? If someone has the “wrong” political opinion or belief system, it’s the norm to just cancel them, to write them off as evil and ignore anything they might say.

This culture of division makes us scared. We’re scared to step out of line, scared of people who are different from us, scared of being rejected by our own group.

In the face of all this fear, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is really good news. Listen to what God’s Word says to the boundaries and labels we use to separate ourselves:

Read Scripture: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28)

Say: If you think our world is divided, it’s nothing compared to the Roman world that the earliest Jesus followers were living in. Back then, different ethnic groups kept to themselves; women and slaves were property; the entire society was built on hard boundary lines of social status.

To that reality – which was pretty much all the world had ever known – the Gospel said: No more. No more to the tribalism that kept God’s image-bearers divided – no more to the sexism and classism that devalued so many of the people made in God’s image.

In Christ Jesus, those boundaries go away, and the only identity that matters is our shared identity as God’s children which we are able to receive through faith because of what Jesus did for us.

And what did Jesus do for us? How did He make this new reality possible? The Bible tells us that in Jesus, God recreated humanity free from sin. It’s sin that causes all our divisions and brokenness; and sin that leads us to claim false identities instead of embracing our true identity as God’s child. In His body on the cross, Jesus bore all those consequences of sin, and through His resurrection, He became the firstborn of a new humanity, united in God. Listen to how the Bible puts it. We were divided from God and divided from each other into groups, but the Bible says:

Read Scripture: But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility… His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. (Ephesians 2:13-18)

Say: Did you catch that? Jesus destroyed the barriers; He broke the boundaries. Because of what He did for us on the cross, we can be reunited with God and with each other. Have you ever noticed that the Church is the most diverse institution in the world? Your local church community may not be – but globally, the Church is made up of people from every single culture, every language, every social status – all of us being united into one family and sharing in one Spirit.