Harvest

As I take services I will post anything which I think might be useful...Last Sunday I took the Harvest service. We did the parable of the sower in the morning (of course) and what the soil meant in the evening.

The morning was a family service so I used a 'magic bag' and a puppet of a bird. I told the parable of the sower using a story bag (you can get this via the story bag link via http://www.decadeministries.co.uk/). This bag has the story of the soil, birds eating the seed, the sun, thorns and harvest. As you tell each bit, you turn the bag inside out and miraculously you get a different picture so telling the story in an interesting way. The kids seemed quite unimpressed but it created a lot of interest amongst the adults.

In the story, I skipped over the birds but mentioned that in the hymn we had just sung, 'we plough the fields and scatter' it mentions that God looks after the birds and that God looks after the sparrows (Lk 12:6-7). Then as I was talking, Hazel made a bird puppet come up over the pulpit behind me and throw seed across the front row. We had a discussion about birds and that it was not the birds' fault for eating the seed, but people's hard hearts were the real problem.

It went well - puppets usually do!