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Children’s Church Lesson for Pentecost: The Holy Spirit Gives Us Power

In this children’s church lesson, kids discover the context of Pentecost as they explore the Holy Spirit’s power. These activities come from DIG IN Sunday School and Children’s Church curriculums.

Children’s Church Lesson for Pentecost

Bible Message: God Sends Christians the Holy Spirit

Supplies:

Discuss

Say: Today we’ll explore how the Holy Spirit gives us power. The Holy Spirit is God, with us today. The Holy Spirit is the special helper Jesus promised to us.

Ask:

  • Tell about something you use that needs power to work. Where does it get its power? Have kids turn to a partner to share. Then ask a few kids to share with everyone.

Say: You probably have to charge your device with electricity or put in batteries to make it work. But that’s not how the Holy Spirit gives us power! Let’s see what happened when the first Christians got power from the Holy Spirit.

Grow Stronger

Say: Sometimes when we think about power, we think about strong, muscly people. As we learn the Bible story, we’ll do some exercises that will help us grow strong and powerful.

Open your Bible to Acts 2, and show kids the words.

Say: This story starts on a special day called Pentecost. In Bible times, it was sort of like a celebration or holiday.

Read Acts 2:1-2.

Say: A mighty windstorm! Let’s get blown all about by doing 10 jumping jacks! Lead kids in doing jumping jacks.

Say: When the Holy Spirit came, even the wind was powerful. The Holy Spirit gives us power. But there was more!

Read Acts 2:3.

Say: Wow, the Holy Spirit’s power made it look like there was fire sitting on everyone’s heads. Let’s do shoulder presses that help us picture power on our heads.

Lead kids in doing modified shoulder presses. They’ll hold out their arms in a bicep flex pose, then bring their fists together right above their heads. Repeat several times.

Say: So far we’ve seen wind and fire—pretty powerful things. But the real power was just about to happen.

The Holy Spirit Gives Us Power

Read Acts 2:4.

Say: Wow! Everyone could speak different languages—ones they’d never known before—because the Holy Spirit gives us power. Let’s use Spanish to count to 10 as we do 10 sit-ups.

Lead kids in doing sit-ups, counting to 10 in Spanish: uno (OOH-no), dos (dose), tres (trace), quatro (KWA-trow), cinco (SINK-oh), seis (sayse), siete (see-YET-ay), ocho (OH-cho), nueve (new-EH-vay), diez (dee-ES).

Say: Great job! You might wonder why the Holy Spirit gave people power to speak new languages. Well, let’s find out why!

You see, all the wind and fire and shouting got people’s attention. So people from everywhere came running to see what was happening.

Lead kids in running in place.

Say: When everyone arrived, they needed to hear the good news about Jesus and about how the Holy Spirit gives us power. But people were from so many different cities and countries, and they spoke a lot of languages! Because of the Holy Spirit’s power in Jesus’ friends, they were able to tell everyone the good news—no matter where they were from.

Ask:

  • What’s the difference between the power your body might have from the exercises we did and the power the Holy Spirit gives?

Say: We don’t need strong muscles to follow Jesus. And we might not need another language to tell about Jesus, but we might need help finding the words to say in our own language. The Holy Spirit gives us power to share all about the good news of Jesus.

Low-Energy Game: Use Your Noodle

Supplies:

  • pool noodles (1 for every 5 kids)
  • tennis balls (1 for every 5 kids)
  • cotton balls (1 for every 5 kids)
  • tube socks (1 for every 5 kids)
  • 6-inch pieces of string (1 for every 5 kids)
  • chairs or other goal markers (1 for every 5 kids)
  • upbeat music (optional)
  • music player (optional)

Easy Prep:

  • Along 1 side of your room, set goal markers at least 3 feet apart.
  • About 10 feet directly across from each goal marker, place a pile of supplies:
    • pool noodle
    • tennis ball
    • cotton ball
    • tube sock
    • a 6-inch piece of string

This activity is recommended for 5 or more kids.

Strategize a Solution

Say: We’ve been discovering ways the Holy Spirit gives us power. Because we can’t see the Holy Spirit, it can be hard to understand what that means or what that power looks like. I have a game that will help us understand by testing our brain power.

  • Form mixed-age teams of five, and have each team choose a pile of supplies.
  • Each team’s goal is to throw all the supplies toward their goal marker and have everything land at the marker at exactly the same time.
  • First, have teams try by letting everyone select an item to throw and allowing kids to try to synchronize their throws.
  • When this first attempt doesn’t work, have teams gather their supplies again.
  • Give teams time to brainstorm ways they can complete the challenge and to try out their strategies.
  • If you’d like, play music in the background while kids play.
  • The solution to the game is to attach all the objects to the pool noodle by putting things inside the tube sock and then slipping the sock over the end of the pool noodle. Then the string can be used to secure the sock to the pool noodle to be thrown. All the objects will arrive at the goal marker at the same time.

Talk About It

Ask:

  • How did you see brain power at work during this game?
  • How do you know brain power is real if you can’t see it?

Say: When we think of power, most of the time we think of physical power or strength—something we can see pretty clearly. Brain power is different. We all have it, but we can’t see it by looking at someone. We see the effects of brain power and know it’s real and it’s inside us. The Holy Spirit gives us power that’s inside us, too!

This children’s church lesson includes activities from Group’s DIG IN Bible in One Year program. The Bible message comes from DIG IN Children’s Church, and the low-energy game comes from DIG IN Sunday School. If you want more lessons like this, check out DIG IN’s combo plan, which gives you access to both Sunday School and Children’s Church! For even more lesson ideas, check out these posts.

2 thoughts on “Children’s Church Lesson for Pentecost: The Holy Spirit Gives Us Power

  1. Nemdong Ronrang

    Grateful.

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