After a great week of Christmas services, NewSpring will not have services on Sunday, December 27, 2009.

See you on Sunday, January 3, 2010 for our last week of The Reindeer Radio Show and North Pole News!

It’s Christmas and our fifth week of pretending to be the live studio audience of the Reindeer Radio Show where we sing along with some cool Christmas tunes and learn lots of good news from God’s word.

And it’s Christmas at the North Pole News where elementary school kids hear hilarious headlines and the news they Need to Know from God’s word.

Today’s Headline (Need to Know): God Sent His Son to be the Savior of the World!

SpringTown & Treehouse (Preschool) Many of us receive gifts at Christmastime, and today we learned about the best gift ever—the gift God sent us on the very first Christmas—Jesus!

Our Remember Verse tells us why Jesus was born. If your child has the verse memorized on January 3, 2010, he or she will win a prize!

“God (arms open to the sky) sent his Son (hold a baby) to be the Savior (arms stretched out wide) of the world (make a circle with arms above head).” 1 John 4:14 (hold up four fingers)

God sent baby Jesus to save us all from doing wrong things and to fix our friendship with God—that makes Him the best Christmas present ever!

This week at home, help your child place the ornament he or she made at church on your Christmas tree. Ask your child to tell you what Christmas trees remind us of:

The top of the Christmas tree points up to remind us that GOD sent Jesus to us.

The gifts under the tree remind us that God sent us the BEST Christmas gift ever—Jesus!

ImagiNation, Jump Street & Shockwave (Elementary School) What gifts have you or your child received in years past that are worn out, broken or now boring? We can all probably name a few. Today kids learned about a gift we’ve been given that never wears out, breaks or becomes boring.

In the beginning of time Adam and Eve were best friends with God, but when they disobeyed God and sinned, it hurt everyone’s friendship with God. The prophet Micah told us about how God was going to send someone special to fix our friendship with him. And one night in the tiny town of Bethlehem, the promise God made through Micah came true. A baby was born named Jesus—this was the person God said he would send to save us from our sin and fix our friendship with Him.

The cool thing was that Jesus didn’t come as a king riding on a horse or as a rich man dressed in fancy clothes. He didn’t even come as a grown up! God thought of the best way to have his friends back. He chose to come as a baby, because no one would be afraid of a baby! He came as a baby so that we could be friends with Him and not be afraid. God planned all along to come in a way we could understand.

Today’s headline, God Sent His Son to be the Savior of the World, is also a part of the Bible verse we’re memorizing. Help your child practice memorizing it at home this week so that he or she can win a prize on January 3, 2010!

“God sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. We saw his Son and are now telling others about Him.” - 1 John 4:14

Motions for younger elementary kids: “God (arms open to the sky) sent his Son (hold a baby) to be the Savior (arms stretched out wide) of the world (make a circle with arms above head). We saw (take a picture) his Son (pat a baby’s back) and are now telling others (cup hands around mouth) about Him (arms open to sky).” 1 John 4:14 (hold up four fingers, then a one and a four at the same time)

REMINDER: After the last service at your campus on December 24, 2009, the next NewSpring services will be held on January 3, 2010. There will be no services on December 27, 2009.

This was our fourth week pretending to be the live studio audience of the Reindeer Radio Show where we sing along with some cool Christmas tunes and learn lots of good news from God’s word.

And it was also our fourth week as the live studio audience of the North Pole News where the headlines are hilarious and the news is just what we Need to Know.

Today’s Headline (Need to Know): God Has a Plan for Me!

Traveling over the holidays can be fun, but it can also be inconvenient and frustrating. This week we learned how Mary and Joseph had to take a trip just before the first Christmas—an inconvenient and frustrating trip they were not planning to take (Luke 2:1-5, 7c).

As they were preparing for Jesus to be born, Mary and Joseph received the unexpected news that they were going to have to travel to their hometown of Bethlehem, to be counted by the king. After traveling for three long days on foot and by donkey they arrived in Bethlehem to find that all the hotels were full—the only place for them to stay was in a barn full of animals and hay!

See Mary and Joseph did not plan on traveling to Bethlehem, and they did not plan on sleeping in a barn, but amazingly, this was all a part of God’s awesome plan. Kids in ImagiNation, Jump Street & Shockwave learned that seven hundred years earlier, the prophet, Micah, had told us how God had planned to use the unimportant town of Bethlehem as the place for our Savior to be born (Micah 5:2 NIrV). Because God wanted Jesus to be born here, He planned long ago to send Mary and Joseph there around the time Jesus was to be born.

Even though the journey was long and their bed was not in a hotel, everything that happened was a part of God’s plan for Mary, Joseph and Jesus.  In the same way, God has a plan for you! God has many great plans for us, but his greatest plan for us is that we would be best friends with Jesus. God sent Jesus at Christmastime to be our best friend.

Preschoolers learned that when Jesus is our best friend He saves us from doing wrong things and fixes our friendship with God.

And kids in ImagiNation, Jump Street & Shockwave learned that when we are best friends with Jesus our friendship with God is fixed and we can live in heaven with him one day. Sending Jesus was God’s great plan to fix our friendship with him!

Here are a few things you can do this week to remind your child that God has a plan for him or her:

As your child is curious about the presents under the Christmas tree, ask him or her the following questions:

1. Who is this gift for?
2. Does this person know we are giving them this gift? (Hopefully not!)
3. Just like they don’t know that they are getting this gift, we may not always know what God has planned for us.
4. But do you think this person will think this present is great? (Yes!)
5. In the same way we can trust that God’s plans for us are going to be great!

As you are preparing holiday meals, have your child help you follow the recipes and taste the outcome. Tell your child that following the recipe, or plan, makes what you are cooking turn out great, and if we follow God’s plan and have Jesus as our best friend, God will make sure our life turns out great!

Check out www.NewSpring.cc for the Christmas service times at your campus this week, and invite friends, family and strangers to come worship with you! This week’s Christmas services will be the only church services held this week as NewSpring will not have services on December 27, 2009.

Preschool parents, keep working with your child to memorize this series’ Remember Verse. Here is the verse and the motions we do along with it:

“God (arms open to the sky) sent his Son (hold a baby) to be the Savior (arms stretched out wide) of the world (make a circle with arms above head).” 1 John 4:14 (hold up four fingers)

Elementary school parents encourage your child to memorize the following verse Here is the first part of the verse we have been learning:

“God sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. We saw his Son and are now telling others about Him.” - 1 John 4:14

Motions for younger elementary kids: “God (arms open to the sky) sent his Son (hold a baby) to be the Savior (arms stretched out wide) of the world (make a circle with arms above head). We saw (take a picture) his Son (pat a baby’s back) and are now telling others (cup hands around mouth) about Him (arms open to sky).” 1 John 4:14 (hold up four fingers, then a one and a four at the same time)