Thriving Mennonite Church

Note: there was no post for last week as we have a very small service on the Sunday following Christmas, so I put out the extra resources from throughout Advent, rather than assemble new materials.

Our congregation uses the Menno Media worship resources during the season of Advent, and this year’s theme is Together on the Journey. For Epiphany, the title is Nurturing Faith, and we explore the scriptures of Luke 2:41–52 and Psalm 2:7–8.

Further to using scripture from Luke this week, we will be moving into a sermon series built around the Shine Bible Outlines for the next season. The theme is On the Way with Jesus: Stories from Luke. I’m interested to see where our worship team takes this, since it’s typically a Sunday School curriculum.

Since the gospel according to Luke is so central to our upcoming series, I was looking for a good informational resource on who Luke was. Although I rarely pay for resources, I found an affordable packet on TPT that seemed like it would be worth the investment. For this week, I’m going to use just the biography and the review page, and I’ll use other parts of this resource in the coming weeks.

I was also lucky to get a link for the 2025 New Year free colouring sheet from Illustrated Ministry, and they have two Epiphany freebies I will also be using: the Epiphany star, and the free Epiphany curriculum.

Lastly, I wanted to include a resource on Jesus’ youth, and his being found in the temple, since that is the theme of this week’s sermon. In order to get capture the full narrative, I used Parts 1, 2, and 3 from BiblePrintables.com (free), and Young Jesus in the Temple from BibleWorksheets.com (free).

It’s a colouring-heavy week, but the scope of the materials is what I was looking for.