Six Discipleship Festivals to be Held in Beirut Lighthouse

As part of the Cubs To Lions discipleship training, our Lebanon staff decided for the year of 2019 to host six different discipleship festivals. At these festivals, all the women from our individual weekly classes will come to get a part of their training and they will bring their children with them to attend parallel sessions through our children’s ministry. The idea behind this is that the kids will receive the same message delivered to their mothers, and because of this there would be transformative discussions back at home.

From the 18th to the 21st of February 2019 we held our first of the six planned festivals. The turnout was very successful and we hosted four different teams of mothers and children at our Beirut Lighthouse for around 3 hours of fun and discipleship each day.

Discipleship Festival 1: The Love of God

This first festival’s program was about the love of God. Since it happened to be right after Valentine’s day our staff decided it would be a great opportunity to discuss the real meaning of love, and how it was demonstrated on the cross by Jesus. This blog post will be split into two parts, the rest of this post will focus on the children’s ministry, and the second will focus on the women.

Children’s Ministry Report

Each day of the festival, the kids would arrive at 9:30 to register and join their team. We separated them into four teams according to their age groups.

• Those who were less than four were placed in a room filled with toys where they could play all morning, listen to worship, dance, hear a story from the gospel, and color!
• Those who were older were separated into three teams : 4 to 7, 8 to 11, and 12 plus. Those three teams would rotate every hour within three rooms. In each room they learned about God’s love through different activities.

First room activities:

The first activity in the first room was worship, and the children got to worship the Lord through music. Following the singing, Horizons staff shared with them the message of love, which is the story of salvation. After the message, they were given the opportunity to pray and give their heart to Jesus which was led by their teacher. Then they watched a video about how Jesus is with us every minute of every day because he cares so much for us and never leaves us nor forsakes us. To end the first hour the children played a short game.

Second room activities:

The children in the second room, started by playing an icebreaker that involved getting to know each other by passing a ball around and stating what the other person’s name is and what his favorite food, color, or hobby is. Then the Horizons staff moved to a more serious topic and asked the kids to draw what love is in their eyes. Some drew their parents, others drew their schools, and some drew food! It was funny to see what they saw as love especially for those who didn’t start in the first room. Then the children made a heart craft and wrote on it : God is love with reference to the verse from 1st John chapter 4 and verse 8 ‘Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ‘ They also memorized the verse!

Third room activities:

In the last room, the children also started with an icebreaker. The teacher would state a fact and whoever shared this had to form a group. From this simple game they learned that they can have things in common with complete strangers and that can bring love between people. Then the children were shown pictures of different types of love: family, pets, Jesus, hearts, and friends and our staff gave them time to discuss each picture in order to talk about how they perceive love in those different areas. The third activity was building puzzles as team work. The puzzles were about the lost sheep which shows how personal God’s love is for us. Then the children took pictures to remember the team they were with and they ended the hour by playing musical chairs.

Stay tuned for part two of the blog where we share testimonies from the women’s discipleship classes!