Jesus Without Language

 

In the parable of the Vineyard owner the men collect the grapes and that’s as simple as this craft linking idea is. It’s wonderfully open ended. Fill your bunch of grapes with coins that the men will be paid, scrunch tissue paper, dab paint, use glass beads or sequins, or anything you have on hand.

 
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Here are the images you need for the hero’s attributes linked to Parable of the Vineyard Owner (Matthew 20).
Each hero set contains a high quality graphic of the character, a take home bible card and a colouring page.

The images are displayed small here, click on the image you wish to have, then save the image that loads.
(Please note : Some images have no watermark but are not copyright free, they are only intended for classroom use.)

 

English

 

 

Extra’s – (English Only).
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the parable of the Vineyard owner each man receives a single coin, a danarii, a days wage. Alone it seemed insignificant but when the men in the parable compared their wages they saw the level of unfairness. This craft gathers all those coins, each equal, and puts them together to represent something much bigger. This craft is simple but a little time consuming.

 
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Within the parable of the vineyard owner, there are two distinct themes you can pull out for games: the idea of the grape gather’s task and that of the fairness of the wages. I’ve tried to give you a selection of games to represent both, and that can also suit various setups and spaces.

Grape toss

Basically, a beanbag toss game. You can use grapes or other small items, and you need to toss them into various containers. For one child, have them try to reach every container, for groups, have each group assigned a different container to fill.

Back of the line

A simple dice game where you draw a line on the floor and challenge the child to get to the end. They can move forward the number of steps (fairy steps, heel to toe) that they roll on the dice, but if they roll a five or six they must restart. Reward all kids at the end if they made it or not. Talk about the frustration of being sent back and how the position on the line didn’t really matter.

Gather

Mirroring the workers, have the kids gather things from around your space. These can be anything you have a large amount of similar items: e.g. ball pit balls, plastic fruit etc. If you have multiple kids, start them at different times but reward them with the same reward.

Grape bunch

Use packaging tape to a circle around one member of each team with sticky tape: sticky side out. Have the rest of the team stick balloons to them to make them into a grape bunch. The winning team is the one with the most balloons.

Order

Jesus was a storyteller, the crowd loved his stories and the Bible records many of them for us. One day, he was trying to explain the kingdom of heaven and told a story about a man who owned a vineyard, where they grow grapes.

It was picking season and the grapes were round and fat and juicy and needing to be collected, so the man went into the town to find some men to help pick them. It was morning, and soon he found the men waiting to be offered work. He agreed to pay them the standard daily wage and took them back to the vineyard.

The men started working, and soon the quiet vines were full of men chatting and singing and moving huge bunches of grapes into baskets to be collected. Their fingers were stained purple and their backs hot from the heat of the sun. There was too much work and not enough men.

In the middle of the day, the owner went back to the town to find more men. He found a crowd of men who had not been hired and brought them back to help. Then he went back to town at 3 in the afternoon and brought more men, and again at 5. When it reached 6, and evening started coming, the owner told the manager it was time for everyone to stop working.

The manager handed the men who had worked 1 hour the full daily wage, then he gave the exact same amount to those who had worked 3 hours, 6 hours and those who worked all day. The men who had worked all day were not pleased, why had they worked hard in the baking sun when those who came at the end got the same pay?

They confronted the owner, grumbling. The owner told them to take the wage they had agreed, it was his choice to pay the last men the same as the first. Were they really angry he was being generous?

Jesus’ story was telling the crowd an important message. Jesus put it this way: “The last will be first, and the first will be last.”

In God’s kingdom everyone is valued, there isn’t the best and the worst, everyone is loved. Not because of what they do, or how hard they work, but because God chose them and loves them. Those who think they should be first will end up at the back, and those who think they should be at the back will find themselves at the front.