Your students join Captain Paul Hammer, Lt. Stu Dent, and Shelbot the Overly Brainy Robot on a “Great Commission Adventure” to teach and learn the Gospel on newly discovered worlds.
Set in a space-themed adventure, Jesus in Space features three complete lessons:
1) The Baptism of Jesus and John the Baptist
2) The Last Supper & Foot Washing
3) The Road to Emmaus
Each of the 3 interactive lessons takes you to a new planet and new aliens who need to learn the story. Lt. Stu must translate the lesson into a message they can understand. And he gets plenty of help from Shelbot and Capt Paul, and the aliens. Memorable, fun, wide-age range, and content rich!
Mission #1: On the underwater Planet “Vet”
After landing on the Planet Vet, Lt Stu meets Minister Gil Filtafish who needs his help explaining Baptism and the story of Jesus baptism in a way that will make sense to new believers on this underwater planet.
Shelbot beams down the BABEL 4000 Computer which challenges Lt Stu (your students) to translate the story of Jesus’ Baptism and John’s message into Vetian underwater language.
The BABEL 4000 gives students a huge number of Vet-ian words and ideas to select from, and allows them to construct the scenes in the story using Vet-ian images and metaphors. The kids get to re-outfit John the Baptist for underwater ministry (octopus suckers instead of camel’s hair?), and then play it back to great effect. It’s an activity that produces new results each time they use it, and plenty of discussion opportunities about what the concepts and words of baptism mean to us.
Back aboard the Tarsus, Capt Paul explains Baptism to Stu in a presentation, and then quizzes him (your students). There’s also a fun Baptism “Pipes” puzzle game that displays info about Baptism -and then tests student’s memory of that info in a fun quiz which appears at the end of the Pipes game.
See more photos of this and other missions by toggling the “additional graphics” box below.
Mission #2: On the Planet Whammo
Mission 2 has four things to do:
1) After landing, Stu plays a story game with Chief Wackimac and his tribe of alien Robots to help them get the story of the Last Supper right! This is where your kids learn the story –by making sure the robots don’t mess it up as they step forward to tell it.
You’ll find out why the planet is called “Whammo” when the robots begin to make a lot of mistakes in their retelling of the story. Your students will need to pay attention and should consult their Bibles to be sure they are helping the Whambots tell the story correctly.
2) If they get most of the story parts right, students get to play a fun “Parts of the Seder Meal” game.
3) After the story, Stu can play a Whammo game about the meaning of the Passover-Seder meal and its connection to the Lord’s Supper in the Whammo Labs “robot recycling plant.”
4) A final (ecumenical) presentation about the practice of communion takes place back aboard the ship.
See more photos of this and other missions by toggling the “additional graphics” box below.
Mission #3: On Ice Moon Alpha
On Ice Moon Alpha, Lt Stu encounters strange snowball creatures ready to learn the story of Jesus on the Road to Emmaus. At first, Stu is mis-identified as an alien intruder by “Flinger” -a snowball-throwing Snoballian. After a snowball game, Teacher Snobob appears to settle things down and invites Stu to help them dramatize their Emmaus play.
The story of the Road to Emmaus has a lot of parts! So Shelbot beams down the “Stagecraft 4000” to help Stu dramatize the story with the Snoballians as the actors. The Stagecraft 4000 allows your student to design the actors, place them in the scenes, -and add scenery, sound effects, and music to dramatize the script. Then they play it back.
The SNEAKY IDEA is that they’ll want to create several versions, which means they’ll be deepening their memory of all those story parts each time they construct the story.
To cap off the visit to Ice Moon Alpha, Captain Paul leads the Snoballians (your students) through a very special INTERACTIVE reflection activity about “how we see Jesus today” …and “how we can help OTHERS see Jesus”.
See more photos of this and other missions by toggling the “additional graphics” box below.
The BABEL 4000 story creator used by students on Planet Vet.
Final screen in the interactive “Jesus in the Snow” reflection activity, found on Ice Moon Alpha (Road to Emmaus).
WIDE Age Range: The CD’s sense of humor and activities will appeal to older children and younger youth, without going over the heads of younger kids. That said, we always tell folks that non-readers and early-readers should have help navigating and learning from any of our CDs.
It should take your students about 20-30 minutes to get through each mission, depending on their age. Longer if you ask more questions (and we hope you do!)
Price: $29 for one copy. $25 for two to four copies. See online order form for 5+ Site License pricing.
Age Range: Ages 5-15. Certain content is tucked in especially for the older students. Younger kids will need some help navigating. Jump Menus allow leaders to select or bypass certain content. System Requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Windows7/8 and Mac OS 10.0-10.6 compatible. Minimum 800 mhz or higher. 512 mb Ram or higher. 16 mb videoram or higher.
Teacher’s Guide and Outline to Jesus in Space CD Student Worksheets for Jesus in Space CD See Jesus in Space CD in action:
The Story Behind Jesus in Space…
I admit it… I’m a space nerd. I grew up watching Lost in Space. Was disappointed when they cancelled Star Trek Enterprise. Ben our programmer and Colin our music guy are also space nuts. A statue of Gort the Robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still presides over our recording studio. So you might say Jesus in Space was “predestined” to happen. 
Over the years, I’ve had fun imagining with students how you might “tell this story to an alien from outer space who didn’t know anything about the Bible.” It’s an entertaining trick that always gets the kids talking. In 2005, I began scribbling notes for a series of Jesus Story CDs focused on key Jesus stories. I asked some friends if they thought “Jesus in Space” would be considered blasphemous by non-space-nerds. “No, it’s a great idea!” they said. And so, Jesus in Space was born.
Jesus in Space is fun and intentionally campy. Look and listen closely, –you’ll see us paying homage to various space shows and space shtick, including: Star Trek, Lost in Space, the Jetsons, Star Wars, Close Encounters, even Spaceballs. This ‘touch’ also helps older students feel like the program is for them.
The program is a visual feast as well. Look in the backgrounds to see where Ben our animator/programmer has stuck all sorts of random space gadgetry.
Other subtle tributes: The aliens on Ice Moon Alpha speak a strange version of Canadian, with a tweak of Scottish. –A tip of the hat to my Canadian relatives. The “world tribe” motif on the planet Whammo is my very subtle tribute to my denomination’s mission history, and to one of my great great grandmothers who was a native American. The “Jesus in the Snow” activity goes way back to my youth group days and is one of my all-time favorite lessons. You don’t see it in materials these days, so I’m hoping to preserve it in my own way by putting it in software.
Other things of notice: It’s no accident that the captain of the Tarsus is named Paul and is guided by Great Commission Control. We thought it worked right into the evangelistic nature of the first three stories. Baptism, Communion with Jesus, and “how do you see Jesus today” (Road to Emmaus). And whether you baptize by sprinkling -or the whole pool, you’ll feel comfortable with our presentation.
You may also note in JiS that we continue to stretch our age range down a bit, –making sure our software stretches a little easier to the younger children, as well as up to young teens. Having said this, even my own teenagers have been giggling at JiS everytime I show it to them. John the Baptist with a crab-hair coat and sucker-fish belt will do that to you. The older kids will get a kick out of our space theme and sense of humor.
(OSU fans: Listen carefully to the drums on Whammo.)
A huge amount of credit for this epic goes to Ben our programmer and illustrator, and Colin our sound and music guy. Ben’s humorous creativity is evident everywhere in the program. Colin’s soundtrack and character voice modifications are terrific.
As always, your support and feedback is essential to our development process. Feel free to email me your thoughts and suggestions to neil@sundaysoftware.com
<>< Neil