Session plan
- Welcome prayer and stillness
- Flying races (in two teams for this - beginners and advanced - time flying around the track.)
- Travel to p:transfiguration - praise dance - jumping in the house of God! Music played through Zoom ("share your computers sound" for best results)
- Build. Split in to three teams.
- 2 Kings 2:5-11; Elijah taken up to heaven
- Ex 33:7-11,15-22; Moses meets with God
- Jesus Transfiguration; Mark 9:2-9
- Say the story. Get them building. Read the story while building. Lots of "I wonder..." statements
- Final blessing
- Afterwards - explain about Half term plans. Arrange the big build and sculpture world
Reflections
Lots learned this week. We were 17 in total and this is reasonably hard to manage, certainly when it comes to working together. We used the Minecraft teams again to split in to smaller groups. I added in a green team this time. The Zoom breakout rooms were named by colour. All but one of the players mastered the breakout rooms. It seemed to go well.
The flying race was really interesting. It was important to get into different ability groups as the beginners (blue) mostly did not know how to fly with Elytra's. But they really enjoyed learning making it a positive experience. The advanced group (Red) were accomplished flyers and had times ranging from 16s to 13.6s for the best. The finishing line had trip wires and a redstone circuit to shoot fireworks. Perhaps we could add in a go switch and a end switch to log and give timings? The simple way was for me to set a stopwatch to '3,2,1 Go!' and someone yell 'Finish' when the flyer crossed the line! This worked really well. I also realise I am a bad flyer! Some people were making mischief on the red course and tipping water out of the hoops.
Ratios: We split into three groups for the building part and exploring the story. This is where I over-complicated things. The story was the Transfiguration of Jesus. Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus. I had one group build that story, another Elijah ascending to heaven in the fiery chariot and a final group build Moses meeting God face to face. The smaller groups do work and I think a ratio of 1 group leader to 5 participants really seems to work. However, I did not have enough group leaders. Good briefing worked with the one group leader I had, but it was harder.
In the groups the aim was to tell the story, then build it while reading the story and then asking the imaginative 'I wonder...' type questions. Then they could explain to the other groups the what's and why's of the build.
It was also quite hard to build some of the narrative. I need to give thought in choosing narrative or symbolic passages.
Praise
I wanted to see how we could explore praise in Minecraft. Singing was unlikely to work as, well it would be wierd. You don't do that in Minecraft. But you do move and music is a part of the game. I thought dance might be possible. So I played World Wide Message Tribes' 'Jumping in the House of God' over Zoom and asked them to move, jump and do what they wanted to express themselves in music.
They erupted in action, even some quite good dance moves, some breakdancing even! Then the parrots appeared, followed by a school of dolphins and fireworks, witches and then lava everywhere! In fact it got so destructive that we destroyed the mountain and all that was left was a pool of lava!
It went down really well. They all seemed to really love it. Thinking more deeply the OT is full of powerful and even violent expressions of worship. God exists in pillars of fire, wind, trees clap their hands, stones will even cry out! Very appropriate perhaps? Fitting to a powerful and wondrous God?
Unfortunately it was the hill I had chosen for the transfiguration!
Small additional tip /kill @e will kill all entities in the game - every animal, creature, player and pets. It was not good of me to use it when I wanted to only remove a few animals from one world! Not all of the worlds and all the animals! Oooops.