What is a 'Messiah'?
Today the children in Room 8 explored the word 'Messiah'. We looked at the word leadership and explored a leader who shaped changed in his country, Nelson Mandela.
The activity was started by segregating the class according to what they were wearing. The children moved and took their seats, forming two groups. One group had 20 children and the other group had 6 children. I then told the large group that a new rule had been made, that they were not able to sit at their seats or table. The children thought this was unfair as they were the larger group.
As a class we then looked at the life of Nelson Mandela and the children saw what we were doing in class and thepoint of the exercise. The children looked at a picture of the shantytowns in Soweto and displayed shocked and sad faces. We looked at his leadership and what he wanted for his people, and then Room 8 applied this to Jesus.
- What did the people want the Messiah to be? What kind of person did God send them?
The fighter and soldier the people expected to set them free was not the person God had sent. The children said God sent Jesus who was - peaceful, forgiving, kind, caring and not a fighter.
The children defined a 'Messiah' as a leader who would set his people free.
The children also experienced the Byrds singing the famous song from the 1960s.