The Shepherd’s Tale (All-age interactive story)

I offer this as a tried and tested all-age activity suitable for any family/all-age service or event over the Christmas season. It has been used in small parish churches, town churches and in a cathedral. On every occasion it has been thoroughly enjoyed  and I especially like its capacity to get the adults to join in with the children.

It works this way. Get the children to join you and split them into five groups and sit on the ground in their groups (they won’t be sitting still for long so don’t worry if the floor is a bit cold). If you have a centre aisle of reasonable length, spread the groups down the aisle so all the congregation are as near a group as possible.

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One group has to remember ‘Caleb’, a shepherd's name; the second remember ‘Amos’ another shepherd; the third group ‘Eleazar’, the  fourth ‘Reuben’ and the fifth group ‘Sheep’.  ALL THE CHILDREN have to listen out for their group’s name AND FOR ‘Shepherds’ and ‘Bethlehem’

As you tell the story which can be accessed HERE (BUT don't go to it until you've finished reading this column as it will then replace these instructions: so you might best be served by copying these instructions to a separate document first), each group has to stand up, turn round and sit down again whenever ‘their’ name is called and to do the same when ‘Shepherds’ or ‘Bethlehem’ are read out.

Start to read the story slowly so the children get the idea and so the smaller ones have a chance to follow the lead of the older children in their group. Then gradually speed up so the children soon have hardly time to sit down before they have to get up again. The children will enjoy the muddle and so will the rest of the congregation (unless they are very, very staid!).

THEN: stop the story where indicated in the script and invite everyone who can to join in each time ‘Shepherds’ or ‘Bethlehem’ feature. Every time I’ve used it about 80-90% of the congregation have joined in and on the occasion we used it in a cathedral I was delighted to see the Mayor and her party enjoying the childlikeness.

Once the script ends, go straight into whatever message fits your situation best. I like to go to why God chose powerless shepherds as his first evangelists – but there are many, many more messages that can be appended to the activity.

The story script can be accessed HERE. I only hope that if you chose to use this story (or your own similar story-line developed on this idea) you have as much fun as we have on every ‘outing’ of it.

There is more original Christmas and Advent material on this blog which you can find at the special index HERE