Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Repurposing in Children's Ministry



The Fiery furnace lends itself to drama. It is an easy story to bring to life with just a few simple props. I originally was going to make a refrigerator box into a fiery furnace. However, I found they were not as easy to get as I thought. 

Then our short term mission’s team asked if they could set up our puppet stage, which we NEVER use, so they could practice for their trip. They wanted to know if they could keep it up for the TWO whole months before their trip. 

So here I was with this space hogging stage in my Sunday School area and no place for the furnace that wasn’t materializing anyway. 


"What's a girl to do in a situation like this?" I said to myself.

Then it hit me –
make the STAGE into the fiery furnace.




We had leftover brick paper from another project, so I covered our stage with that.
The mission's team could still use it with the paper on it.













I wish I had time to cut a window in the furnace, but since the curtains were still on the stage, it would have required some finagling. Instead, we had Nebuchadnezzar look into the furnace from the side when we acted out the drama.










My co-worker made these great flames.











Using a puppet stage for the furnace had other advantages. “Jesus” could get in from behind it without any of the kids noticing. If you look in the photo, you will see that we backed the stage up to our double doors. I didn’t even know that “Jesus” had gotten into the furnace when we acted this out. When we threw Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into the furnace, there was Jesus! He untied their ropes and walked around among them.




Next week I will show "the rest of this story."

What I took away from this is that God can guide you to use things you already have to make things that you want. Just ask him to open your eyes to the possibilities all around you.

You know the flames my co-worker made? They became the flaming sword that God put outside the garden of Eden to guard it after Adam and Eve were dispelled.(I have pictures, but you can't see them yet!)

And the puppet stage that became the fiery furnace? It morphed two more times for other uses before we took it down. Don't worry - you'll get to see it all in future posts too. I know you are just dying to :-).

Just in case you are curious, you can also see that the entire children's area was morphing while we did these activities. The walls are all white here because we had taken down the paneling and primed them for the murals you see in the background of all my posts. The area is still morphing - one day the whole project will morph right onto the pages of this blog.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing, Joan! I love these. :-)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the encouragement Terri. I love doing it!

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