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.