We hosted our tenth annual Reformation Party on Saturday, November 4th. Thirteen adults and twenty three kids (including our family) packed into our house for an evening of food, fellowship, worship and games. As usual, it was a scramble up until the last minute for our family to prepare for the evening, but with the Lord's help, we managed to pull it off.
Matt chose to focus on several creeds for this year's theme.
The First Creed, which was Peter's confession that Jesus is "the Christ, the Son of the living God," (Matt. 16:16) formed the foundation for our Reformation party. The other creeds that were covered were:
The Apostles Creed, which emphasizes the indentity of the Church,
The Nicene Creed, which emphasizes that Jesus was both fully God and fully man and
The Athanasian Creed, which defines the Trinity. We also learned about the confessions of several church denominations.
Matt created games to help the kids (and adults) learn about the different creeds and confessions. He also planned our worship time. Thank goodness the UPS store was available for
very last minute copying and collating of the worship bulletin. Grace worked tirelessly to craft all of the games and their parts and pieces. The rest of our family worked to get the house and the food ready. Grandma Dianne lent an extra set of hands to help us serve dinner.
Paul and Grandpa Bob made a big catapult in the days leading up to the party. Paul procured some little watermelons from a neighbor's farm field (with his permission) and a few small pumpkins. These served as ammunition for the catapult during the party. The kids were supposed to think of a sin in their lives that needed to be launched before they pulled back the mechanism on the catapult.
One would think that after ten years, this whole Reformation party thing would be easy for our family to pull off, but each year, we find that we are stretched on many levels. We have to rely heavily on the Lord every time, which is a very good thing. He never lets us down. He always provides in terms of creativity, time and the many little details that need to be attended to. This year I awoke on Saturday morning with a "to do" list that was not possible to complete in a day, but it all got done. The Lord is worthy of praise!
Related resources:
Family Celebrations at Thanksgiving and Alternatives to Halloween. This book has little bios of early Church leaders and martyrs, each with a related hymn and Bible verses to read. I read parts of this book to the kids every year. It's been a great spring board for discussion for us.
A Night of Reformation--the resource that started it all. We used this book for about the first five years of Reformation parties, but have since then Matt has created his own themes relating to Church history.
The Art of the Catapult--this book was a gift to Paul from Uncle Brian and Aunt Julie. Paul and Grandpa used the plans in it to build the catapult.
