Before class
Before anyone arrives, Stretch 14 from the Big-Print Pack should already be up, and a small cross of red paper or felt cut for each person, with a strip of tape to fix it. Your own reading is pp. 98–101; give a few extra minutes to the table of the eight crusades on p. 100, which sets Adams’ words beside each cross. Have Bibles open at John 18:36 and Luke 9:23, and a second marker at James 1:20.
Opening · 5 minutes
As people come in, hand each one a red cross and ask them to fix it on their right shoulder. When everyone is wearing one, say: “More than nine hundred years ago, thousands of men did exactly what you just did. Adams tells us on the chart that this is where the word crusade comes from. Today we are going to find eight of these crosses, read what Adams wrote beside each one, and ask a hard question. Did the cross on the shoulder do what those men hoped it would?” Then send them to the red crosses along the top of the spread.
At the chart · 15 minutes
1Read the first cross. Find pin 1 on p. 98, where Adams writes “8 Crusades or holy wars,” then the first red cross, “1096 to 99.” Have one person read the note aloud slowly: Peter the Hermit preaches, Urban II blesses, Godfrey commands, Jerusalem is taken in 1099. Ask what it meant that Godfrey became king; the book notes that Jerusalem had a Christian king for the first time since the Saracens took it. Then show the small picture on p. 100 of what that won, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, “88 years,” ending when Saladin takes Palestine in 1187.
2Glorious but fruitless. Turn to the table on p. 100 and read the eight entries in turn, a different voice for each. Ask the room to listen for how each one ends. The second is “defeated,” the third “glorious but fruitless,” the seventh “Defeated and taken prisoner,” and the eighth closes with Christians driven out of Syria in 1291. Stop at the fifth, which took Constantinople, a Christian city. Explain that Adams counts Henry VI’s expedition as his fourth, so this is his fifth, though most books call it the Fourth (p. 99).
3Read the words before the shape. Take the class to the far left of p. 98, where Louis’ stream divides in 843 among his sons. Ask which key that shape suggests, and many will say Key 4. Then read Adams’ words: it is an inheritance among brothers, not a revolt. Now find “Venice becomes independent of the Eastern Empire 997,” where a thin ribbon truly breaks away. That is Key 4 · A stream that splits is a revolt. Finish with the Greeks’ “Lower Italy” running into the Normans’ Naples, which is Key 5 · A stream that ends in another is a conquest.
4The split with no caption. Tell the class that one of the saddest events of this stretch has no words on the chart at all. Give them the year, 1054, and let them hunt in the Papal-Rome stream. The block of Pope Leo IX ends at “54,” and the small picture on p. 100 shows the block of Zoe and Constantine IX, in the Eastern Empire, ending at the same number. That year Rome and Constantinople excommunicated each other, and East and West have gone separate ways ever since. Read John 17:21 slowly and let it sit before anyone speaks.
Talk it over · 15 minutes
The crusaders wore a cross of red cloth on the shoulder. What did Jesus mean when he told his followers to take up their cross daily, and how is that different?
Listen for: Listen for the difference between a sign you wear and a life you give: deny himself, daily, follow me (Luke 9:23). If the class drifts into simply condemning the crusaders, remind them that many went in real devotion, and ask what our own outward signs can hide.
The fifth crusade took Constantinople, a Christian city. How can good intentions go so badly wrong?
Listen for: Answers may mention anger, greed, or the pull of an army already on the road. James 1:20 gives the heart of it: the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. Keep the talk on the human heart, ours included, and not only on soldiers long ago.
Leo IX’s block and Constantine IX’s both end at “54.” Why does a split between believers grieve God, even when each side is sure it is right?
Listen for: Point them to John 17:21, where Jesus prays that his people may be one so that the world may believe. If someone wants to argue which side was right in 1054, set it gently aside; the question is about our own divisions.
To close
“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”Galatians 6:14 · KJV
May the only cross we glory in be the cross of your Son, Lord, carried in our lives and not only on our shoulders.
With younger children (6–10)
How many red crosses can they find along the top of the Big-Print strip? Counting is the way in. Let them pin on their own paper cross and tell them, in two sentences, what the soldiers hoped to do and that Jerusalem was taken in 1099. Then hunt for the Norman helmet dated 1048 and ask how many streams come out of it; there are two. End by reading John 18:36 and asking what Jesus said his kingdom is not.