Children's Church: Builders Try to Build a Great Tower (Genesis 11)

Opening:

Welcome!

Tell kids to high five three people

Today = God is the greatest

Bible story: Doing something great to be famous

My favorite famous person: [insert here]

Q. Who is one of your favorite famous people?

Famous doesn’t = bad

Bible Story: pointing away from God

PRAY

God is the greatest

Bible Story: People wanted to be the greatest

Today, anyone can be famous

YouTube

Instagram

TikTok

Q. If you were famous, what would you want to be famous for?

For me: being in a rock band!

Act it out (play air guitar)

Your turn to act out

Try to get others to pay attention

Allow for about a minute

Q. What happened to our room when everyone was trying to be the center of attention?

Q. What did it take to be the most famous in our room?

My command = more focus on yourself than others

Wanting others to pay attention to us

Talk about why God is the greatest, and we don’t need to be.

Let’s see what they wanted to be famous for

Read Genesis 11:1-4.

Split kids into 2 teams

Give kids newspaper

They will crumple the newspaper up and put tape on it to build a tower

The team with the tallest tower wins

Allow this to go on for about three minutes, and then say...

Wait! Pause!

Something happened

God saw and didn’t like

Tell about a time you got in trouble with a group of friends

I will share my own personal example first

Again, God didn’t like

Causes confusion: different languages

Made building harder

God limited > I will limit

No talking

Only pinkie fingers

Allow another 3 minutes

Compare:

Talking vs. not talking

Hands vs. only pinkies

Think about building a real-life, huge tower without being able to understand each other

Q. If you were one of the builders, what would you do?

Let’s see how they reacted

Make everyone stand far away from their group members as I read Genesis 11:8-9.

Read Genesis 11:8-9.

God is the greatest, and we don’t need to be.

Confusing

Talk about it

Q. Based on this story, do you think being famous is bad? Explain

Q. If you were famous, what could you do to help people see that God is the greatest… even greater than you?

Encourage kids to think of real athletes or celebrities who give glory to God.

Another confusing thing: God doesn’t want them working together

But usually we encourage unity

Q. When can unity be a bad thing?

Cliques

Working together to do something wrong

When we remember that God is the greatest, we don’t focus on people.

We focus on God!

Make a name for themselves

Focus on themselves, not God

When we work with others, can still focus on God

When don’t do things perfectly, can let go bc He’s the greatest.

Q. What’s one way you can point to God instead of yourself this week?

Let’s practice telling God what He’s the greatest at

E.g. “God, you’re the greatest at showing love!”

Allow time for kids to praise God.

Craft

Life Application:

Give kids paper and pens

Write down formula at the top of paper: He > I

Reminds us to God is greater

Good deeds point to His greatness

Have kids think of things they can point to God’s greatness for and write or draw them as prayers below their formulas.

For example: “God, thank you for helping me remember what I studied so I could ace my test this week.”

PRAY