CY course- a youth version of Christianity Explored

If you are interested in a new course of Christian basics then try CY, the youth edition of "Christianity Explored". I have just finished running this with a group of 5 teenagers, all of whom are linked to 0:-) ("Squiggle"). It incorporates a meal together, plus videos/ DVD (optional), group activities, a Bible study on Mark's gospel and discussion and preferably a day-away or a weekend-away (we went for a day to Bassenfell Manor which was great). 7 sessions plus day/weekend-away. There is a web site with downloads, user guides, leaders guides etc- see http://www.christianityexplored.com/cy.

The course takes a journey through Mark's Gospel to CY Jesus Matters, CY Jesus Died, CY Jesus Lives -and much more!

It is worth doing for those already committed to Jesus, so they can fit the pieces together and for those who are searching. It doesn't push people into making a decision but gives them the information to help them decide themselves- while letting them know that there is a cost to following Jesus!

This is the first time I have used the Youth version- the "Christianity Explored" course I have done with adults before and this was very much appreciated. I was looking forward to doing CY and was a little nervous- but I needn't have been- the CY course went very well and I would recommend it to others. We had fun and fellowship and we learnt a lot - including those who had been Christians for as long as they can remember.

It is a wonderful thing to see young people with an active faith in Jesus- this course can help them- give it a go!

Welcome again!

Another example of a welcoming church for children - at Warkworth in Northumberland this time.

School Sunday

Culgaith came up with a very successful response to our Director of Education's challenge to link churches and schools more closely. They held their main Sunday service (a Communion) in the school one week. Obviously the children helped prepare for it, lots of people came, and it was a great success. It's set to become an annual feature.

Recommendations to Bishop’s Council

Family Friendly Churches
1) Evaluate the transferability of the Liverpool Child-Friendly Church Award scheme
2) Audit where there are family-friendly congregations at present, and recommend places where existing congregations could realistically be challenged/enabled to do better, and where consideration should be given to planting Fresh Expression congregations because there is no other suitable provision in the area.
3) Commission a single-sheet guide for low/no-children churches on developing a strategy for relating to children (eg signposting to churches where there is provision; having story bags/liturgy boxes/play table and standby helpers)
Supporting work with 5s-11s in our churches
4) Archdeaconry volunteer 5s-11s champions/ consultants to be recruited to parallel the under 5s system, to be trained & resourced via the Resource Centre, and networked to NISCU, SU etc etc with a brief to encourage after-school clubs with a strategy to link them on to older groups (eg Youth Alpha) to set up a discipleship stream.
5) Encourage spread of Godly Play into churches by recruiting a trained volunteer with that vision.
6) Spread good practice of how schools and churches can interlock their activity by eg holding services and events on each other’s premises, having broader contact than Vicar-Headteacher link.
Resourcing and supporting (clergy re) youth work in parishes
7) Conduct further research with clergy to identify what sort of support and resource they are looking for.
8) Ask the Youth Officer to prepare a report on what resources (equipment, his time in terms of what other work would not be done, leadership needs) would be required to achieve the objective of a youth congregation in each market town.
9) Encourage Deanery Mission and Pastoral Committees to consider allocating stipendiary time to promotion of youth ministry/congregations in their areas when looking at their deployment plans.

Christian Life and Children

Go to www.chistianlifeand.com to watch a clip of resource giving a solidly evangelical but well presented motivational/teaching message about the importance of Christian work with children.

'No one size fits all'

Church challenged to re-think the way it engages with young people

Three books launched by the Church of England this week give an honest appraisal of how the Church relates to young people through worship and mission today. They offer valuable insights into how churches might begin the process of assessing and developing their ministry with young people.

As a response to the Church of England's National Youth Strategy, Good News for Young People, in 2002, two of the new books focus on the tough questions facing the Church as it meets the challenge of relating the gospel in fresh and appealing ways to young people.

Young People and Mission – edited by youth ministry specialists Alison and David Booker – gathers together contributions on a number of practical areas of mission, as well as provocative reflections on the tensions that continually need to be addressed by those engaged in youth work. The book draws on the experiences of writers with a range of experience in working with young people, to explore issues such as:

How Christian youth subculture can distance young people from the Church

Whether 'mass action mission events' are effective in engaging individuals with a sustainable foundation for a growing faith

Helping young Christians understand other faiths and the implications of living as Christian in a multi-faith society

The challenges and benefits of working alongside uniformed organisations such as Scouts, Guides and the Boys' and Girls' Brigades.

Taking another of the National Youth Strategy's themes as its cue, Young People and Worship, edited by Mark Montgomery, calls on churches to rethink the way that they engage young people in worship. Stressing the fact that there is no 'one size fits all' way of involving young people in the liturgical life of the church, the book covers creative approaches to worship and wider issues of spirituality through contributions from a range of youth work specialists.

The importance of providing prayer and Bible study that resonates with young people's own experiences and stimulates their imagination is highlighted, as is the need for 'all-age worship' to be based on a participatory approach rather than seen an opportunity to simply 'entertain' younger members of the congregation.

"The authors take youth culture seriously but at the same time recognize that young people do not want to dumb down God and be patronized with gimmicks. This book encourages new attitudes to young people and to worshipping God, with fresh motivation to see it work. It is my hope and prayer that its suggestions will be taken on board," says the Rt Revd Roger Sainsbury, Chair of the National Youth Agency and the Centre for Youth Ministry.

Third in the trio, Mission-shaped Youth collects together stories of people and projects that are responding to the call to mission made in the landmark Mission-shaped Church report. These case studies – ranging from monthly worship events organised by a group of churches, to church youth workers employed in secondary schools – are used to draw out some of the key challenges and encouragement for the wider Church, as well as offering inspiration for churches seeking to develop their work with young people both inside and outside the Church building.

In the book, the Rt Revd Graham Cray, Bishop of Maidstone and chair of the working party that wrote Mission-shaped Church, urges churches to intersect with today's young people in their daily lives and culture – and not just see mission with young people as being all about evangelism. He identifies seven essential features of youth ministry today, writing that 'mission-shaped' youth work should be relational, incarnational, long-term, and should recognise the importance of discipleship and worship as key elements. Chris Russell, vicar of St Laurence, Reading, summarises this analysis in describing three 'pivots' around which 'youth-mission-shaped church' grows: the importance of worship, of fostering a sense of community belonging, and about creating a community of disciples seeking to follow Jesus in their everyday life.

The Rt Revd Lindsay Urwin, Bishop of Horsham, believes Mission-shaped Youth represents a significant contribution to the Church's resources for those engaging in youth ministry: "This book is full of wisdom and experience. I hope it will engender a new courage and a new generosity to re-make our structures and worship opportunities so as to gather up young people 'that none be lost'."

Mission-shaped Youth – rethinking young people and church (ISBN 978-07151-4082-6) is priced £7.99; Young People and Mission – a practical guide (ISBN 978-07151-4060-4) and Young People and Worship – a practical guide (ISBN 978-07151-4057-4) are both priced £11.99.

Blooming Children

That's the title of Blackburn Diocese's regular resource mailing for
childern's workers. They publish it on the web, so you can benefit too.
Issue 8 is at
http://www.blackburn.anglican.org/children/200703issue8.pdf.

0:-) or "Squiggle" (if you want to pronounce it)

Hi, I've been told by my father to post something...so I thought that I might as well talk about 0:-), the Fresh Expressions worship that I am involved with. We meet twice a month: on the first saturday of the month we meet in the Tithe Barn (Carlisle) for full worship, and then on the third saturday of the month we meet in St Cuthbert's Vestry (Carlisle) for cafe worship. We also run a yearly event called Ablaze, which is often an all-night event with workshops, worship, bands, open-mic and food, and tries to include people from all over.

We have a website which can tell you about everything we do, including a forum for Young People, a podcast to subscribe to, and information about CDYC (Carlisle Diocese Youth Council). The URL is http://www.ablaze.org.uk/.

We also have a band that leads worship at most 0:-)s and Ablazes, as well as at events to which we are invited. At the moment I'm a part of this band and run our Myspace, which I try to keep up to date with what we're doing. The URL for that is http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=44944661.

Finally for now, we often prepare short dramas and talks for 0:-), some of which get filmed and then posted up on YouTube under our profile name "SquiggleCarlisle". The URL is http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SquiggleCarlisle but for those of you who've never even heard of YouTube, let alone know how to navigate it, here's a few of our videos so far:


This was Ben Mattinson's talk at the 2007 Easter 0:-).

This was a short drama about Septimus, the Roman Centurion, and his witness to the Resurrection, which we performed at the 2007 Easter 0:-).

Finally, this was a spoof of Ardman Animation's 'Creature Comforts' , which was about prayer, that we showed at a cafe worship 0:-).

Young bellringers

That bit in the Calthwaite story about 'jobs' in church. I was over in Dalston the other day and our meeting was interrupted by the sound of the church bell - and the vicar and wardens rushed across the road to see what was wrong.

Actually it was the children's club getting going - and ringing the bell is a big draw.

You could make quite a thing of it for younger people...

An Edwardian Childhood

Have you ever wondered why someone in your congregation is so 'down' on children making a noise in church? Jean was reading some autobiographical notes recently from days gone by, and while there are some wonderful memories there of church and Sunday School, one was not like that at all. The writer was terrified into silence and stillness on Sundays, and couldn't wait to escape from it.

Now if that happens to you, you can react in one of two ways if you ever go to church again. You can celebrate your escape, and be the chief plotter in helping new youngsters have a good time. Or you can resent enormously the fact that others are being allowed to get away with what you never could.

Of course it's more complicated than that, but it might be interesting, if you want to move forward with children's provision in your church, to get the older members talking about what it was like when they were young...

What is Godly Play?

An increasing number of our churches and schools are getting excited by Godly Play. So what is it?

Godly Play is a method of telling Bible stories, or presenting parables or lessons about religious traditions.
It invites listeners into the stories and encourages them to connect the stories with personal experience.
Godly Play is a non-coercive way to encourage children to move into larger dimensions of belief and faith, through wondering questions and open-ended response time.
It is a way of preparing children to join in the worship and life of their congregations as they develop a deeper understanding of stories, symbols and rites.
Godly Play is one of several variations of the Montessori tradition of religious education and has been developed in the United States by Dr Jerome Berryman.
Useful Links
Godly Play UKThe Website of Godly Play in the UK
The Center for the Theology of ChildhoodThis is the home of Godly Play in the USA. You will find information about Godly Play worldwide here and articles by Jerome Berryman, the founder of Godly Play.

The staff of our Education Department run regular introductory and training days in Godly Play.

A story from Calthwaite

This is the local story that made it into Rural Children, Rural Church.

Sunday was not the right day to run a children's club for 5-11-year-olds, so the Rainbow Club has been moved to the Saturday afternoon before the monthly Family Communion the following day. The club frequently includes a Godly Play story, and always features a Godly Play Feast, which makes very good links with the service of Holy Communion. At the club, children are allocated tasks to undertake at the service next day. Ringing the bell is particularly popular, but they also give out books, take up the elements for the Communion, and the older ones may be asked to read a lesson. Some 15 children attend the club and a handful of families come to the Family Communion, with many more for special occasions. The confirmation class also makes use of Godly Play in its preparation.

The parish also runs an activity day in the local primary school, which attracts some 35 children during Holy Week. This sometimes includes sharing a Passover Meal. Good Friday is marked by a three-mile walk, folllowing a portable cross, along the back lanes to the largest church in the benefice for a service.

Parents have been gradually drawn into the church's activities, so that now the church is mainly run by people in their forties, although the church officers are older.