You will need these supplies:

poster board cut to resemble body parts for each child (head, torso, arms and legs)
sticky-backed hook-and-loop fastening tape
poster board scrap pieces or colourful construction paper
felt-tip markers.

Here’s how to make your body models:

1. Work with your children to craft cardboard human bodies. Their size and complexity is up to you, but you do need to make detachable parts for each body, including legs, arms, heads, hands, feet, eyes, ears and nose. Use sticky-backed hook-and-loop fastening tape to attach the body parts. Glue on paper clothing to cover the body parts that need to be treated with special modesty.
2. After your children have completed their models, read 1 Corinthians 12:14-27 and have your children act out the story, removing body parts as necessary, and making the body parts talk to each other.
3. When you have finished the reading, ask your children to restore their models to their original state. As they are doing so, use the discussion questions to talk about individual value.
4. Pray together and thank God for making each person in your family different so you can serve Him and others in a variety of ways.
5. When you see one of your children struggling with feelings of inadequacy, pride or jealousy, choose one of the Scripture verses provided here and add it to their body model.

Questions for discussion

1. What would happen if your eyes decided to quit working?
2. (Ask the same question about other body parts such as the lungs, heart, ears, stomach, muscles, brain etc.)
3. What has God made you good at?
4. How can you honour Him with this gift?
5. What can you do when you are tempted to consider yourself less valuable than others?

Key concepts

The Bible tells us that every person who loves Jesus is considered part of the “body of Christ” (also called the Church). Even within a group of people who all love God and serve Him together, people can be tempted to compare themselves to each other and be jealous.

In Corinth in Bible times, the people in the church were arguing and fighting over who was more valuable. Paul wrote a letter to these people using the analogy of the human body to help explain the value of each person. Paul pointed out that God gave each person a different set of skills so that we can all do different jobs to serve Him and serve each other.

Relevant Scripture

1 Corinthians 12:27 “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Ephesians 4:15-16 “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

Romans 12:4-5 “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

1 John 3:18 “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth.”

1 John 4:11-12,21 “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us. . . . And He has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

John 15:16 “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in My name.”