The Late Breakfast

At our April 5th Sunday Night Youth Focus gathering, we participated in an interactive youth night called The Late Breakfast.

We used the breakfast theme throughout, with breakfast related food and snacks.

I also found some breakfast cereal related games to play. This online cereal quiz was a lot of fun:

http://food.aol.com/play-with-your-food/breakfast-cereal-id-quiz

Also, i found some vintage cereal commercials on YouTube and showed them.





Now for the spiritual side:

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It sets the tone for the rest of the day. Don't believe me? read this nutrition guide. [about.com nutrition] Fro youth focus we looked at four different kinds of breakfast meals a person could eat and we paralleled that with one's spiritual life.

The four breakfasts were:

COFFEE. sort of the quick fix, boost of caffeine to get you going in the morning. usually one fades out soon after the fix is gone. Do you have a coffee-kind of faith? Is it more like a quick fix that fades quickly away?

FAST FOOD: for when you're on the go. we re so busy... our lives are filled with chaos... we don;t have time for a nutritious breakfast, so we go for the most unhealthy thing because it's quick and easy.

Do you have a fast food-kind of faith? are you too busy to invest the right amount of time to deepen your faith? do you want a faith that is fast and easy? if so, it probably wont be a very healthy faith.

CEREAL: for some, it's the morning ritual. same bowl of Cheerios and a glass of juice. you eat it because that is what you've always eaten. it's not bad. it might even be healthy. but is it just a ritual?

Do you have a cereal-kind of faith? just a ritual? no meaning behind it?

WATER: for those who want to skip breakfast. maybe you have no time. maybe you want to maintain your figure. maybe you just don't care or even think about eating breakfast. so a bottle of water will do.

Do you have a water-for breakfast-kind of faith? Do you neglect to realize the freedom you have to choose multiple options every day? Are you even thinking about your faith daily? maybe you see no harm in skipping breakfast. maybe you see no harm in skipping out on faith-building. what elements of our faith do we skip out on? how does that affect us?

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The students split in to four groups and we rotated around to each station. During each station there was a time for students to reflect on a reading and each station had a small set up designed to add to the message of COFFEE, FAST FOOD, CEREAL & WATER.

If i had more time, I would have made the design of each station a little more in depth and would have further developed the atmosphere.

Here are some pictures of each station.

coffee

cereal

fast food

water

I printed off on card stock a Neon Yellow sheet that had a small reading for the group to look at. Also, I had a Neon Pink Small Group Leaders Guide with some follow up questions for each station.

You can download the PDF of the station information sheets and small group q & a here: late-breakfast-stations-yf-45
(right click, save as - or click and then print)

For an added bonus, Wikipedia has some neat information related to the typical breakfast meals for various countries around the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast

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I should note that i got this idea from Santus1 who came up with this idea at Greenbelt 2004. View how they did it HERE.

Also, Jonny Baker had made The Late Breakfast idea on of his 'worship tricks'. view his notes HERE.

You might see that i have made cultural adaptions from England and designed this mainly (but not exclusively) for youth. I wrote the small group questions.

One final note: at the conclusion of our Late Breakfast, i had a series of 40 images posted in the gym for youth to walk around and look at. The images were created by Si Smith, an illustrator from the UK. The series was titled: 40.



View the images HERE.

they are available for purchase at PROOST.

the images depict Jesus in the desert during his 40 days in the wilderness. They are moving images and there is a written piece that compliments each illustration.

You can watch the illustrations put to an Explosions in the Sky song on YouTube HERE.