The first Sunday of the Advent focuses on peace. For this activity youth will be invited to make an individual and/or contribute to a group peace flag. You can give youth individual pieces of paper or construction paper, or you can use a large piece of butcher paper for the whole group.

If you’d like a whole lesson that includes this activity, check it out at: https://umcyoungpeople.org/the-latest/are-we-there-yet-peace

Take a moment to ask students what peace means in their world. What would peace look like at school, online, at home, etc?

Tell students that they are going to create a prayer for peace. Invite them to write and/or draw their prayers for peace on a piece of paper. They can be prayers for peace in their homes, in their communities, peace in their online worlds (we know social media is seldom a peaceful place), and peace in and around the world. They can write or draw prayers for more peace in our schools, neighborhoods, and in our local and federal governments to create policies built on peace.

If you have chosen to do a group flag, attach all the peace flags together to create your group flag and hang it up in your small group space as you discuss.

Invite youth to share about what they wrote and drew.

Close your time in group prayer asking for prayer requests and also asking for where youth would like to pray for more peace in our world.

*You can find information about The Peace Flag Project here: http://thepeaceflagproject.org/workshops/how-to-make-peace-flags/