Tapestry of Faith: Amazing Grace: A Program about Exploring Right and Wrong for Grade 6

Faith In Action: Random Acts of Kindness

Part of Amazing Grace

Activity time: 15 minutes

Description of Activity

Ask youth to imagine and perform random acts of kindness.

Introduce the activity by asking the group to imagine a scene like this: "You and your family are driving along in a car when you get to a tollbooth on the highway. When you pull up to the booth and start to pay, the person in the booth says this: 'You don't have to pay. The person in the car ahead of you paid for you and said to have a good day.' You have no idea who is in the car ahead of you, but you accept the gift and drive happily on down the road."

Say that the story shows a "random act of kindness," also sometimes called a "spontaneous act of kindness"-something a person does for somebody else just because they feel like doing something good and making another person smile. Ask if anything like this has ever happened to your youth. Have they ever received or performed spontaneous acts of kindness?

Tell the group you would like them to come up with some random acts of kindness and then to perform them among their own congregation. This could occur during coffee hour, if that is where the youth typically meet their families and others after their Amazing Grace session, but it could also be in the parking lot or anywhere else. It could involve other youth, children, or adults in the religious education program. The challenge is always the same: Surprise somebody and cause them to smile by doing something nice.

After you have heard some ideas, ask the youth what the results of their actions are likely to be. The round-robin story of Activity 4 should help them to see just how wide the impact of their actions could be.

Make specific plans for youth to act on their ideas (or any other good ideas that pop up). Say you will ask them what happened the next time your group meets.