Thanksgiving Leftovers and Thanksliving that Lasts

I do love Thanksgiving – the reminder of harvest, the abundance of wonderful food, the changing of seasons, time for family and fellowship, and opportunity to offer thanks to God. But perhaps, if I’m completely honest, one of the things I look forward to most is the promise of leftovers – slabs of turkey to make into soups or stews, or sandwiches doused with cranberry sauce, and leftover veggies that can turn out a few more meals.

Sadly, at church we tend to compartmentalize. I do this – once I’m home from leading worship I recycle my printed notes (yes, not brave enough to go high-tech in the pulpit), put the bulletin in the file, and move on to the next week. I’ve started doing a hymn and scripture record and was surprised that in one congregation I’d already preached on a few stories I’d completely forgotten about.

In children’s and youth ministry, we too can have amnesia about what we’ve done before, but we can also pack away topics and ideas far too soon. Particularly when we have few if any kids, and infrequent attenders of those, we can draw out themes to remind our learners that ideas like gratitude and Thanksgiving should translate into Thanks living – things we do all the time. Just as we are always anticipating Christ’s return, we are always living out the major themes and stories of the Bible in some way in our congregations and lives. We can capitalize on this and cover them creatively.

Here are some suggestions for drawing out a theme like gratitude over the next few weeks:

1. Take a look at how you celebrated Thanksgiving this past Sunday. If it wasn’t highlighted in worship or Sunday school, you can refer back to this past weekend’s celebrations as your launch pad in children’s time or class time. If you did cover it, look carefully at what of the curriculum was actually utilized and go from there. 

2. Draw or create a large Thanks Living tree and put it somewhere prominent, either for the whole congregation or the Sunday school. Leave out markers and post-it notes of several sizes and colours with these instructions posted: What are you thankful for this week? Each week point out to your learners how the tree is growing (yes it’s fall, so the leaves will come down at some point, but we’ve still got some time!). You could also offer the option of slips of paper in the bulletin inviting people to share their gratitude list and put it in the offering plate to be added later to the tree or a newsletter article.

3. Have your learners and/or adults share at children’s time or another appropriate time in the service something or someone for which they are grateful or that they appreciate. Detail is great but make sure it doesn’t rival the sermon. Or have special guests come and visit classes to share their gratitude stories.

4. Create gratitude journals where younger learners can draw pictures each week and older learners can write their ideas - point form is fine. Make sure they understand that this is a way to pray as well, offering thanks to God. They may opt to take their journals home and write in them through the week. Invite them to bring their journals on Sundays to share something they’ve included in the past week.

5. Talk about situations where your learners have seen people show gratitude and situations where people did not. How does it feel when someone thanks you? How does it feel when your gift isn’t acknowledged? How much effort does it take to say thank you? Why might some people not say it? How might God feel when the good gifts offered to us are acknowledged?

6. Create puppet plays or skits or songs or raps about gratitude and how God wants us to live with thankful hearts. Design a thank-o-meter and discuss how we know how thankful someone is. Can we ever really know?

7. Create a booklet of favourite family graces, sung or spoken before meals.

8. Read and explore Bible stories where people offered thanks and praise, like the 1 of 10 lepers in Luke 17, or the woman who anointed Jesus in Matthew 14, or when Jesus Himself gave thanks to God before breaking bread at the feeding of the 5,000 or the Last Supper.  

There is never a time that we shouldn’t be giving thanks. It should be part of our daily routine our whole lives. We can do powerful things to nurture gratitude within our congregations and especially our learners.
How do you do with gratitude? What are you grateful for?

“Gratitude is the attitude that determines the altitude of life.”  - Unknown