TODAY'S CHURCH

Keeping devotionals fresh, unexpected and giving your kids ownership are keys to keeping the whole family engaged in a Family Devotional time! So we decided together that we were going to cover the book of Jonah over a two week period. My 5 year old son seemed to know the details pretty "whale". (ok, sorry about that) So I invited him to help prepare the devotional time with me.

Preparation for the devotional night...
• To make it fun, we started by watching (the first half) of the Veggie Tales movie- Jonah. We discussed it as we watched.
• The next day we read the first two chapters of Jonah to compare and discussed some of the things from the movie that the animators had to guess about and how the characters were not the same as the real people. (especially that the caterpillar in the movie is not really Jonah’s traveling companion in the scripture)
• Then we brainstormed how we could learn the main lesson as a family. We concluded that there were really two themes. Week 1 "Obedience" and Week 2 "Mercy and Compassion"

Finally for Week 1 "devotional time" we agreed on doing an interactive tale in the backyard...

Casting…
• Drake (my oldest would play the role of Jonah so he could articulate what he was learning while he was in the belly of the whale
• Big Fish (played by our dog Chance; yes he is a little over weight, but I would not say as big as a whale, I once caught a big catfish; but a big dog fish?).
• Mommy would hold the sign to Nineveh (representing the authority that Jonah was disobeying).
• Little brother Parker would hold the sign to Tarshish representing the temptation to disobey.
• Daddy would do the voice over for God as he directed Jonah. Hope you don't find that blasphemous, I admit I am far from perfect...

We did some ad-libbing which was hilarious of course. Then Jonah gets on a boat (our red wagon) with some sailors (also played by Parker and Mommy). Mommy pulled the boat around the back yard for a couple of minutes until Jonah fell asleep in the bottom of the boat. Unbeknownst to Jonah and the ‘sailors’ a storm began to set in. I had secretly prepared the water hose to simulate a violent storm that threatened to break apart the ship.
(be sure to have everybody wear clothes that can get wet, after all you will be in the belly of the whale) Also I forgot to mention that Jonah had a costume to play the role of the prophet.

To make a long story short: the storm swelled, they threw cargo from the boat, they cast lots, Jonah was awakened, he had some 'splainin to do. Finally they threw him overboard and the great fish- "Chance" came to swallow the prophet.

We used a wet green towel to simulate the seaweed that was wrapped around Jonah’s head, and recalled thinking he was about to die (rehearsed)! The whole family sat with Jonah in the belly of the fish (on the covered portion of our backyard jungle gym at the top of the slide.) We turned the slide into a water slide and placed a kids pool at the bottom for when the fish would spit Jonah out) In the belly, Jonah talked about the prayer he prayed in the belly of the fish and repented; asking for a second chance to do what God asked.

To conclude everyone had to come up with a phrase to say what Jonah learned by the end of chapter 2. Then we all took turns sliding off of the whale’s tongue (water slide) and shouting the phrase: “I’ll obey God today!”