What’s in a Name?

If you asked a kid this question what answer would you get?

“Who do we come to Church/CCD/Sunday School to learn to know better?”

Would they say Jesus?

God?

Christ?

The Lord?

The Messiah?

All of those answers are right, of course, but I think that the many names of Jesus can be a little confusing for younger kids.  There is a wealth of knowledge in those names, though.  Their meaning, what they tell us about the person of God, what truths they point to in Scripture, how they connect the Old Testament and the New Testament…the possibilities are endless.

Here is an activity focusing on the names of Jesus.

You could couple it with a Bible Study on “Who do you say that I am?”(Mark 8:27-30)

You could teach the kids the meaning of each title and have them each look up one of the scripture references to go along with the name.

Or you could just make a colorful craft with any age of kids.

First, print off one of each of these pages for each kid doing the activity.  I copied the first page (Jesus is the…) on white so that they could color in the letters.  The second and third pages I copied on various shades of colored paper.

For the activity I was planning, I knew that I would have various ages of kids and a short amount of time, so I cut out the various titles ahead of time.  (I was able to cut through 3-4 sheets of paper at once, so it wasn’t too bad, but I would not want to have to do this for a very large class).  If I was doing the activity with older kids, I would have them cut out their own and then trade with others if they wanted various colors.  This time, I set up a table with the words, and the kids took turns coming to pick up their color choices.

Then they glued them on collage style onto a 12x18” sheet of black construction paper.

Finally, they colored, cut out, and glued on the title of the project.

And they completed this quick craft.  Because I had cut everything out ahead of time, all of the kids finished in about a half an hour.  We paired this with a discussion on the names of Jesus and we watched the movie Jesus: He Lived Among Us, which was created by The Voice of the Martyrs.  The sale of the DVDs goes to fund the sending of this same video (in many language translations) to nations that need to hear the Gospel.  You can also request a free copy for your church here.  I tried to ask them if they liked the movie, but considering I didn't here a peep out of them after I started it, and they frequently stopped working on the project just to watch, and some asked if they could borrow the DVD to watch it at home, I think that they liked it :)