Face painting is a popular and well-loved special activity for children. It also provides the perfect opportunity to share a story, the Gospel story, with your “captive” audience 🙂
While face painting is very popular, I would recommend hand painting for this project so that the child can look at the colors you are painting as you associate them with your story. In addition, at the end, the child will be able to look at the colors while trying to recount their meaning.
What you will need:
- Face paint; colors needed: white, black, red, lime green, yellow (Note: most face painting kits do not include lime green. We added this color separately.)
- Paintbrushes
- Cups of water for rinsing brushes
- Paper towels
- A small paper plate (not pictured) for the additional green paint.
The purpose of this activity is to “sew” the Gospel Threads as you do some face/hand painting with the children. Again, make sure you know what the Gospel colors represent and share those with the children as you paint. The design you paint does not matter. It does not have to be a “Christian” picture. Images such as a flower, a rainbow, a caterpillar, a butterfly, and a cross all work well. You can use any image as long as you can use the five “gospel” colors to paint them.
If possible, paint the image with colors in this order (though I sometimes use black first to make an outline, then white, red and so on.):
-
White: God is holy
-
Black: Man is sinful
-
Red: Christ is enough
-
Green: Faith is necessary
-
Yellow: Eternity is urgent
Again, read and learn the meaning behind each of the colors. You need to be proficient enough with the content that you can tell the Gospel story while you paint. The idea here is repetition used in fun ways to help reinforce each of the day’s themes and main points.
The following is a SAMPLE script:
“I’m going to paint a picture for you today using five colors. The colors are important because they each stand for a very important idea. As I paint this picture I’m going to tell you a story. Listen carefully because at the end, I want you to look at what I painted and see if you can remember what each of the colors stands for.
I’m going to start with the color WHITE. White stands for GOD and the fact that He is HOLY. Holy means that God is without sin. But He is also JUST and must be true to His nature and punish sin. Gratefully, however, God is also GRACIOUS and loving and wants to forgive sin.
Next, I’ll use the color BLACK. Black represents our SIN. The Bible tells us that every man has sinned; we have all REBELLED and turned away God. Since we have rebelled against God, we are SEPARATED from Him. We have no way to get to Him on our own. Even worse than that, the Bible says that we are DEAD without God because of our sin. But is there any hope?
Thankfully, God, in His love, has provided a way for us to have a relationship with Him. That is what the color RED represents. Red represents God’s son, JESUS. Jesus LIVED the life we could not live: a perfect, sinless life. He DIED the death we deserved to die: a brutal, humiliating death. And he CONQUERED death, the enemy we cannot conquer, by rising from the dead three days later. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection qualify Him to be the answer to our sin problem.
This leads me to the color GREEN. Green stands for the new life we can have by having FAITH in Jesus. Faith in Jesus requires two things: TURNING from our sin and ourselves and TRUSTING in Jesus as our Savior and Lord.
Finally, the color YELLOW represents ETERNITY. Our response to Jesus determines where we will spend eternity. If we turn and trust in Jesus, we will experience the glorious reality of HEAVEN. In addition, the Bible teaches us that in His presence there is fullness of joy. So not only do we get to experience eternity with God in heaven, but we also have the blessing of enjoying a relationship with Him here and now! However, if we turn away from Jesus, HELL is the dreadful reality that we will experience.”
When you finish painting, review what each color represents or ask the child if they can repeat the five main points back to you. If appropriate, follow up by asking if the child would like to respond by turning from their sin and placing their faith in Jesus.
