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Maybe for starters, instead of having all the youth carving, you could have some youth stand aside as judges.  They will be confused at first as to why you are calling for the judging to begin before you have carved the outside.  This gives you another opportunity to contrast our methods to God's methods.  There is also 1 Samuel 16:7 about the Lord judging based on the inner person rather than the exterior (the annointing of David).

You may want to tell everyone that they have to stop after the insides are cleaned out or some will be carving the outside while you are waiting for others to finish the inside (or tell everyone to stop as teh first person is ready to carve).

Another idea is to get the different kids feedback as to which pumpkin is more deserving of winning.

Eric

Doesn't repentance have to be present BEFORE  the cleaning out of the inside of a person?  The Word of God says that "godly sorrow worketh repentance.

This Sunday evening we are having our High School Youth Group to our house for their monthly devotional.  Our Youth Group leader will be out of town, so the opportunity to teach the lesson has fallen upon me!  God gives us many talents, but being able to teach a lesson to our Youth Group in an interactive way is not one of mine.  I can form ideas in writing, but being able to relate them to our teenagers without getting blank stares in return is not something I have been able to master!

My wife came up with an interesting idea that I think is great for a start.  We bought two rather large pumpkins, and we will tell the teenagers that we are having a pumpkin carving contest - divide them into two teams, and tell them the first thing to do is to clean out the pumpkin.  We will then inspect the pumpkins and declare a winner - with the idea being to show them how the cleaned out pumpkins represent our cleaned out hearts when we repent - hopefully some strings and yuck will be left so we can talk about how those represent the sins we have not repented of.

Sounds like a good start, but I'm struggling about where to go from there.  I'm seeking ideas, suggestions, possible web-resources to help me present, in an interactive dialog setting, this lesson on repentance.  I'm especially looking to those of you who have indentified yourselves in the past as youth workers in the church.

Thanks for the help in advance!

In Him,

Duckman

Have you seen the email pieces about the pumpkins that make their way around the 'Net this time of year?

Like "From One Pumpkin Head To Another" for a heading...

and the details about God taking you and getting inside you, as we do pumpkins...
and scooping out all the lumpy fibrous useless yuck...
and doing something constructive with the seeds, growing good out of our worldly mess...
and cutting us new eyes to see with, and new mouths out of which will come His light...
and then we can light the dark paths for others...
and be turned into pumpkin bread/pie, translated into a totally new life, in the morning...

All I've been able to do for youth, myself, is to drill them (like a drill sergeant) for Bible Bowl, and teach them songs and sing with them, and direct plays.  That's it.

Great ideas folks!  Keep em coming!

Duckman