Read all about it: Church House Publishing goes into overdrive

The pile of useful new books giving hands-on help for C&YP work is growing.

Mission-shaped Children by Margaret Withers (CHP 2006) challenges us to place younger people centre stage and arrange some of our ways of being church round their needs rather than vice-versa. DT's take: let's BAN all talk of getting children into church. Instead - what we can do to meet children where they are and help them move to where God is calling them to be, along their journey of life into Him.

Mission-shaped and Rural by Sally Gaze (CHP 2006) is in the same series, and takes the rural dimension of mission seriously, like it says on the tin. There's not a great deal on C&YP, but like Presence and Seeds in Holy Ground it helps to get the juices going about how mission and rural can fit together and not be mutually exclusive ideas.

Rural Children, Rural Church: Mission Opportunities in the Countryside by Rona Orme (CHP 2007) goes the extra mile and does give real-life and workable ideas for working with children in a rural setting. They should be good, because Rona is an old friend of ours and asked us to help some Cumbrian churches supply them! There's quite a bit on working with the church and agricultural year that links well with the grown-up liturgical stiff in Times and Seasons. Don't expect the ethos to be always the same as that of Margaret Withers - read both and decide which works for you.

Not Just Sunday: Setting up and Running Mid-Week Clubs for Children is by Margaret Withers again (CHP 2002). A theme of hers, which quite a few churches I know in Cumbria have found to be true for them, is that it's easier to get a gathering of children together after school mid-week than on Sunday, when numbers can be tiny and very variable, and volunteers less willing too to miss 'their' service. In an ideal world of course we want it all: the full age-range in church on Sunday (especially in our larger churches), at least some provision ('Play Church Bags') on Sunday for visiting/occasional children (have 'child-ready' members of the congregation who spot the need and respond), and a larger, more open gathering probably midweek when we hope for a good crowd including children of non-attending families. Start where you can.

Now watch out for

Children and Bereavement Wendy Duffy
Special Children, Special Needs Simon Bass
Where Two or Three Margaret Withers

all also published by CHP.