This “person treasure hunt” is a way to illustrate that we are all God’s children and we need to follow his commands. You will need:

• A selection of distinctive items of clothing. We used fancy dress items, such as a tutu and rainbow wig, but you could use plain coloured t-shirts or a selection of hats. 6-10 items are ideal, depending on the size of your congregation.
• Enough volunteers to wear these items.
• A set of instructions starting “find someone who is wearing…” and finishing with the item (e.g. “find someone who is wearing a purple tutu”)
• A volunteer to go on a treasure hunt
• A shareable prize – we used a box of Celebrations. Label this “share these with everyone.”

As your congregation arrives, give out the clothing items and an instruction to each person, except the last one who gets the box of chocolates. Keep the first instruction aside.

When you reach the activity, ask your volunteers in the congregation to put on their items. Give the first instruction to your “searcher” and set them off. You may need to help with reading if they can’t yet read, or pair them with an older volunteer to make it a team experience.

As they find each person, they will also get the next instruction until they finally reach the end and win the prize.

For example:

1. Give the instruction “find someone wearing a red t-shirt.”
2. The person in the red t-shirt is found and gives the instruction “find someone wearing an orange t-shirt.”
3. The person in the orange t-shirt is found and gives the instruction “find someone wearing an yellow t-shirt.”
4. The person in the yellow t-shirt is found and gives the prize with the instruction “share this with everyone.”

1 John 5:1-5

A full talk is available for this service in the resources below, covering these three points:

1. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? If you do, you are a child of God!
2. Because we love God, we should love all his children.
3. We show we are children of God by keeping his commandments.

1. Prayer space – invite those who want to become a child of God, or those who want to return (like prodigal son) to make a commitment. Make sure you have some volunteers there who are willing to pray with others.
2. Provide individual paper dolls for people to decorate as themselves. Bring them to a central point to join into a chain, making a commitment to show God’s love to each other and those outside the Church. We used pre-cut out paper people available from eBay/Amazon, but you could also draw and cut out your own.
3. Cut out some large paper/card hearts. Provide paints and decorate them with a handprint. As you do, talk about how we can be kind to others (showing God’s love). We did this activity in a tuff tray on a plastic mat, making it easily accessible for our younger children.
4. Provide journal sheets that people can use to help them consider the theme more deeply. These can be downloaded from the resources section.