Note to the Teacher

This week's scripture focuses on the idea of home. So often, we think of home as the place where we physically live, but Jesus reminds us that home is when we are with God. The icebreaker will invite students to create their dream home. The discussion will help youth understand what it means to feel at home in who they are and who God created them to be. The activity will inspire the youth to help create a youth space that feels like home.

1. Icebreaker: Your Dream Home (10 minutes)

Option 1: High-Tech

Use a website that lets you design blueprints of your dream home (see smartdraw’s online floor plan creator). Tell the youth to work together as a group to design their dream home.

Option 2: Low-Tech

Have a printout of a floor plan. Divide the group into smaller groups of three or four youth to create their dream home.

2. Read Scripture (5 minutes)

This week's scripture focuses on Jesus at the age of twelve and how he worries his parents when they leave to go home. He stays behind in the Temple, God’s house. The emphasis is on what home means and how we find our home in God.

Read Luke 2.41-52.

3. Discussion (15 minutes)

How does it feel when you have to go home at the end of a celebration like Christmas?

How do you think it felt when Jesus’ parents realized he wasn’t with them?

What do you think Jesus meant when he said, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49)

What does it mean to live in God’s house? How do we make the world feel like our home?

4. Activity and Discussion (20 minutes)

We want our youth to feel as though church is another home for them and that the space they come to for Sunday school, worship, or youth group is a place where they are welcome just as they are. We want them to feel that they have a say in how their space functions and looks.

Since this is the final Sunday before the new year, spend some time allowing students to dream about how they would turn the youth space (whatever it is) into a place they can call home.

Draw a scale of the room/space. Have students pick out colors, decorations, furniture, and so on. What can you do to the room to make it feel like this is a space the youth could call home? Where is God’s presence felt in this space they are creating as a home?

If you have the time, resources, and support, you might present the plan to your church trustees and see if any of the changes can make the space feel more like home to the youth.

Close in your typical manner. Consider taking the students' joys and concerns and asking for a volunteer to close in prayer.

Total time: 50 minutes