Children's Bulletins for Christmas

I have written here about Children's Bulletins before and have been using them in my own ministry for four years now. I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but sometimes I find it is worth repeating myself. This is one of those times.

While I think it would be great to create worship that is so engaging and accessible to all people, that nobody requires any additional explanation to participate (or keep from being bored and getting distracted), that is the kind of miracle that might only be possible in the eschaton. So until then, while we still have worship that is less accessible to younger people (though worship is also less accessible to those who don't speak the language used in worship, those who can't read, those whose vision and hearing is impaired and other groups of people as well whom we often forget about) I use children's bulletins to help address some of the questions young people might have about what is going on. 

Christmas is a very special time for children and young people in the Church and many Churches make an extra effort to include young people in their Christmas celebrations: by having special services led by or more accessible to children, by bringing or inviting young people from beyond our Church families to services or by bringing parts of our faith into our Christmas celebrations with younger friends and family members outside worship.
Children's Bulletins are a way to invite children and their families into our worship in ways that are accessible to them. They are also a reminder to all those present that children are a part of the worshiping community who might have different needs than adults and might engage in worship differently.



Below you will find links to three different Children's Bulletins for Christmas services. One is for a Eucharist service, one focuses on the role of shepherds in the Christmas story and one is for use with the Gospel of John as the reading for Christmas (that's right, the prologue to John for kids, this was a fun one to make).
Children's bulletins can be available to families and children at all your Christmas services, along with some drawing supplies which they can use and return at the end of the service. They are most appropriate for children who are able to read (generally age 7-11), but parents can read through them with younger children as well. They can also be available for people to take home to give to children they may be seeing over the Christmas holidays.
You can use these three as they are, or if you would like the original files to modify with information appropriate to your services and parish, just send me an email.


Christmas Eucharist


Christmas Shepherds


Christmas Gospel of John

We Will Walk On

The image above is of the entrance to Christ Church, Cranbrook, BC - the site of this year's BCYAYM Fall Conference. At 848km from St Philip's, the trip from Vancouver to Cranbrook certainly made this year's theme of "Wanderers" applicable for those of us who went. For the members of Cranbrook youth group, who usually have a long journey - across at least one time zone - to get to our Fall Conference, hosting this year was a welcome change.

 

Christ Church Cranbrook is the only Anglican Church in this East Kootenay town and they certainly showed up in force to welcome and host this year's conference. In addition to the 9 members of the youth group who attended the conference, their youth group leader Lorie and priest Yme arranged for volunteers to cater for the group all weekend. Sunday morning's worship service, with both the youth delegates and the Christ Church community, was a wonderful celebration of Harvest Thanksgiving.



As a part of this year's conference, several different workshops were offered to participants exploring different topics. These included an introduction to PWRDF's Fred Says food justice program, looking at building community using the show "Community", yoga, storytelling, a look at ministry in the Church and two different guided meditation sessions. Guided meditation was particularly popular as it offered participants an opportunity to lie back, relax and rest.

 
The worship at this year's conference centered around our wandering theme. We heard stories about Jacob, Abraham and Sarah, and Jesus. We heard about the journeys they were on and those they met along the way.

Tying the worship together was the construction of a stone altar on a small table in the front of the worship space. On the first night, participants heard the story of Jacob's ladder and were invited to take a stone with them and keep it near their head while they slept. The next day, they brought these rocks back to worship and brought them together to make an altar to remember that God is in this place and with us on our journeys.

 
At the beginning of the healing service, each participant added at star to the altar to represent our prayers for healing, a sign that God can be our light in the darkness.

 
Then on the final night, during our Empowerment service, just before the participants piled onto their buses which left Cranbrook at midnight Sunday, each of them was invited to come up and take one of the stones that made the altar. They were asked not to look for the same stone that they contributed on the first day, but take another one as a reminder that they had all come together to make one altar, just as we all come together in the body of Christ.

 
For the occasion of this Fall Conference, David Taylor, who is the chaplain to BCYAYM wrote a new journeying song. While it would be best to hear it sung, the words are also pretty fantastic, so I have included them here so that you can also be a part of our journey to Fall Conference 2014.

WE WILL WALK ON
Music and Lyrics by David Taylor

And we will walk on
knowing God is always with us.
The wilderness is holy ground.
And through uncertainty
there's so much possibility to be found.

Like Abraham and Sarah, who wandered far and wide,
we make our pilgrim journey with God's fam'ly at our side.
Through deserts of injustice, like Hagar, cast a-way,
God will reveal a fountain to refresh us on the way.
That's why we can say that we will…

… walk on
knowing God is always with us.
The wilderness is holy ground.
And through uncertainty
there's so much possibility to be found.

 Like Israel's descendants, set free from Pharoah's hand,
we walk through dang’rous deserts to attain the promised land.
We may not see the outcome. We may not understand.
Still, God reveals fresh water strengthening our feeble hands.
That's why we will stand and we will…

… walk on
knowing God is always with us.
The wilderness is holy ground.
And through uncertainty
there's so much possibility to be found.

We walk within the footprints of those who've gone before.
We journey with the outcast, crossing deserts with the poor.
Refreshing hearts that wander with water from the well
that springs up in the desert giving life to all who dwell
in the path of hell. So let us…

… walk on
knowing God is always with us.
The wilderness is holy ground.
And through uncertainty
there's so much possibility to be found.

 
One final bit of good news for us at St Philip's is that our own Sarah Stephens was chosen to be the new provincial council representative on BCYAYM council. This means that not only will she participate in planning future BCYAYM events, but she will also represent their interests on our Provincial Council for the ecclesiastical province of BC and Yukon. Congratulations to Sarah on her new position! You will do a great job!

Liturgy School students leading Pet Blessing

Oct 4th is the feast of St Francis of Assisi and here at St Philip's we celebrated by having a pet blessing during our Sunday service this past week. The service was also our first intergenerational one of the year and so we had some new faces from our liturgy school class helping as worship leaders.

Congratulations to Norah, Reagan, Pieter and Marna who were reading in worship for the first time this past Sunday! They all did a wonderful job, along with our more veteran leaders - Lindsay, Graeme and Jack. Also, a huge thank you to those children and youth who joined the choir for this special service. It is wonderful to see so many people of different ages making beautiful music together.

Though I neglected to mention it in the bulletin last week, I want to note that the Opening Invocation and Prayer after Communion which we used for the service were both written by our second year liturgy school students. I have included them below along with some of the pictures from this year's service.

We saw many familiar animal faces at this year's service - along with their human companions. It is always so exciting and wonderful to include these important members of the wider earth community in our worship. It is a reminder to us that humanity is just one small part of a huge, interconnected web of created life in our universe. We are called, as people of faith, to recall with humility, that all of creation is sacred and it is through our relationship with other organisms that God continues to give us life. The fifth mark of mission calls us to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and renew and maintain the life of the earth. As we live in this world which God has made and sustains, I hope that we continue to respond to this call.

Come all land animals and sea creatures!
All creatures are welcome in the house of God.

Come all small creatures and big creatures!
All creatures are welcome in the house of God.

Come all birds of land, sea and sky!
All creatures are welcome in the house of God.

Come all trees and weeds!
All creatures are welcome in the house of God.

Come all angels and mortals!
All creatures are welcome in the house of God.

Come all cats, dogs, hamsters, fish, people and turtles!
All creatures are welcome in the house of God.

Creator God,
you spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai
and gave us the ways of love,
Help us:
to know that you are God;
to follow your ways;
to respect your name;
to rest in your presence;
to live as the family of God;
to care for creation;
to love everyone;
to tell the truth;
to give thanks for what we have,
and to give thanks for what others have.
we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ,
who walked these ways of love.
Amen.

Commissionning for Church School

This past Sunday during our Children's Focus at the 10:00am service, we did something that is admittedly a few weeks over due (one of this year's casualties of the busyness of September). We prayed for and commissioned our Church School teachers, storytellers and doorkeepers. 

All the teachers were invited up to the front of the Church, in the midst of their students and the whole congregation. Even the new teachers, who tried to stay in their seats, could not escape Caitlin's invitation.

Once they were gathered, Caitlin led a congregational repeat-after-me prayer for the teachers. Then we asked God to bless them and support them in their ministry with the Church School.

Here are the prayer and the blessing for those who missed it on Sunday:

O Holy Wisdom,
you have called these people:
Erin, Amanda and Janet
Rhona, Bruce and Janice
Marilyn, Dorothy and Rebecca
Suretha and Deb
to be storytellers and doorkeepers.
May they continue
to nurture and teach
by their example
of forgiveness and love.
We pray for each one of the them
as they do this work
as the body of Christ in this place.

With hands extended in blessing, we then commissioned the teachers:

May they be blessed by the Creating Womb of God, who formed each of us in the divine image and calls us to holy work.

May they be blessed by Jesus the Word, who taught as a child in the temple and calls the little children to his side.

And may they be blessed by the Holy Spirit, Wisdom of God, who orders all things and teaches us the way of prudence, now and always.

Amen.

 

Dunbar Harvest Festival - Now with St Philip's pens that don't break!

This past Saturday was the Dunbar Harvest festival and members of St Philip's were in our usual station on Dunbar, handing out beads, pens and sharing God's love with our neighbours.

 

In the two years that I have been at St Philip's this has been an annual event in which we have participated and so this was my third time hanging out at this neighbourhood festival. This year was by far the best year - due to a major assist from the lovely weather - we had lots of people stop my our table for a little chat and heard that people remember our rummage sale and our beads from previous years. 

Clare Morgan and Carol Simpson are perfectly set to give beads to the kids

In case you didn't get a chance to stop by and visit up, here are just some of the pictures from this weekend's event. 

Lots of families from the Dunbar neighbourhood remembered us from previous years and appreciated our participation in the Harvest Festival.Also popular amongst those who visited the table were our reminder flyers about this Saturday's Rummage Sale. It is sure the be a huge success!

The warm sunny weather was a big improvement on last year's torrential rain storm and had everyone smiling.

Best of all, the new St Philip's pens we ordered don't break right away! (Which is clearly what has Charlotte in such a good mood). This may seem like a trivial thing to some of you, but I have been talking about it all week because I am so excited!

Filling each other in as some people arrive and others leave. People from St Philip's took shifts of an hour or two at the table.

 

 

Charlie, the Stephens' family dog, was in fine form as usual and was obviously excited the share the news of our upcoming Pet Blessing with all the other pets in Dunbar.

Overall, it was a wonderful way to spend some time with other enthusiastic St Philip's members, sharing what we love most about our Church with others.

Wondering about Youth Group

Last Monday was our first youth group meeting of the year and during senior youth group, we set aside some time to dream about what youth group might be like this year. Each person was given a big sheet of chart paper and a marker and asked to wonder about four things: what are they excited about for youth group, what are they anxious about for youth group, what are they curious about or interested in for youth group and finally what would bore them about youth group.

After each person had a chance to wonder about these questions, one at a time and record their thoughts on their own sheet we turned our pages over and people were invited to share their wondering with the whole group.  

Here are the combined wonderings of the senior youth group from last week.

I wonder what you are excited about for youth group this year:

• no stress 
• food 
• friends 
• talking 
• escape 
• happy people 
• games 
• refreshment 
• Raymond’s cooking 
• creating a community 
• sleepovers in Churches 
• old friends 
• good food 
• laughter 
• bible studies 
• plays 
• youth directed church services 
• staying in touch with friends 
• friendship 
• peace 
• being one with the world and God 
• good times 
• voyages 
• whoosh 
• youth led services with skits 
• youth camping trips 
• A Christmas Carol 
• having a safe environment to talk about our feelings
• new people 
• sports

I wonder what you are worried or anxious about for youth group this year:

• nada
• time 
• things that are not safe church 
• getting to and from youth group 
• 0 
• nothing 
• nothing at all worries me 
• missing time for schoolwork

I wonder what you are curious about or interested in for youth group this year:

• exploring my relationship with God
• El Salvador
• new ways of viewing things
• if we will go go-karting
• how the group dynamic will change
• how much time we will spend in quiet Bible time
• who will come to youth group
• will I meet new people?
• will I make new friends?
• trips
• the teachings of the bible
• how to make more youth plays and youth led services
• different games
• trying new things

I wonder what might be boring about youth group this year:

• nothing
• talking for long periods of undisrupted time
• not managing time well resulting in being unable to do planned activities
• repeating activities too often
• not enough free time
• less games
• n/a
• not a single thing bores me

Welcome Back to Church School

With September comes a whole array of exciting activities beginning again at St Philip's. We are two weeks into our Church school year now and our Church School Coordinator, Erin McDougall has put together a welcome message for all those beginning classes again for the year.

Dear Parents,

Welcome/ Welcome back to St. Philip’s Church School!  We are glad that your children will be joining us this year to grow in their Christian knowledge spirituality.

For those who are new to St. Philip’s Church, the Church School program takes place during the 10am Sunday Service.  The children have a special time of focus in the worship before they go to their classes and return in time to receive Communion with their parents.  

We are very excited to be continuing with the Godly Play program at St. Philip’s.

In 2010 Marilyn introduced Godly play to St Philips by introducing some Godly Play based elements in her  “Sacred Story, Sacred Space” sessions that she did with the children once each month.  Because of the overall positive reception from the children, the Godly play program was fully introduced three years ago on most Sundays each month with the children in Kindergarten (if they are ready) to grade 7.  On Sundays that we don’t do Godly Play, there is an intergenerational service (e.g. Blessing of the Pets), or a multi-age class activity (e.g. music sessions, bread making (for St. Philip’s Day, etc.).  

We plan to continue the Godly play program this year in generally the same format.  We have 5 regular Godly play teachers and are planning a training session run by Marilyn to enable 2-3 new teachers to lead the program! We are always looking for more teachers so do come and speak to me if you are interested!

Godly Play class

As some of you may know, one of the premises of Godly Play is that the children build their relationship with God in a space that is purely for them for this purpose only.  We are lucky to have the use of The Totem room each Sunday as it is a calm space, and will look each week as if it is dedicated to Godly Play alone.  In order to preserve the room as their space, children must be comfortable attending without their parents.  For children, who need to be with a parent, they are welcome to attend the Class for Younger Children.  Having said this, we run a session each September on welcome back Sunday where the parents may join in to see what the program looks like.

A couple of things to note about Godly Play:

-   The curriculum does not follow the liturgy. 

-   The program is Montessori based for those familiar with this method of teaching/learning

-   The story is intended to be a surprise for the children, so that a sense of mystery and wonder can be maintained while the story is being told.

-   Any ‘work’ the children do in response to the story is theirs and they are not required to share it with anyone.  If they choose to bring it home, they may do so, but they are also welcome to live it in their Godly Play space.  We will save it for the entire year.

-   The Godly Play space will not be open for the children to play in after church (again, this is preserve the ‘specialness’ of the space as a place to learn about God).

We understand that some parents may be curious to learn more about Godly Play, so please ask us and we will be happy to tell you more about it (and may be able to offer you a sneak peak of the space).  Also, check out: www.GodlyPlay.org or www.GodlyPlay.ca

Liturgy School

Caitlin is continuing with Liturgy school this year during the 10AM service for youth from grade 4 -8 that will consist of several different kinds of classes and ways to worship. Youth will have a choice of joining this group or the Godly play classes or remaining in worship each week.

Class for Younger Children (Preschoolers and Kindergarteners)

We recognize that some of the younger children may not be quite ready to begin Godly Play without a parent.  Therefore we continue to offer a more traditional Church School class option. This class is run by Janet England and Amanda Holley.  It will be in the Tom Thumb room downstairs and any child of preschool or kindergarten age is welcome to attend (with or without a parent).  When these children feel ready to attend without a parent, they will be welcome to join the Godly Play class at that time.

Intergenerational Services occur a few times each year.  On these Sundays, the children will remain in Church for the entire service.  For the fall, these services are scheduled for October 5th (Pet Blessing) and November 30(St. Nicholas). For these services, students in the Church School are invited to help lead parts of the service by serving as readings, choir members, prayer leaders or in other roles.

Other Church School Activities

There are a few special services (i.e. Christmas Eve 5pm Service, Good Friday) in which you will be asked if your child would like to participate.

The Church School is involved in a number of other activities including Outreach Projects such as supporting a needy family through the Christmas Hamper Project.

We try to have 1 or 2 social events each term such as a Halloween Lunch or Easter Egg Hunt.  We also coordinate the annual Advent Wreath Making on the first Sunday in Advent (Dec 2^nd ).

We have started Open Gym sessions on Friday evenings once per month where children with or without their families are able to come and play games and join in a potluck dinner.  Look for notices about these in the email bulletin and on the Children and youth notice board.

More information will be provided about these activities as the time for them approaches.  We are always looking for extra hands to help out, so please let me know if you can help out in any way.  If you have any questions about the Church School, please feel free to contact me by phone or via e-mail.

Sincerely,

Erin McDougall

Church School Coordinator

Erin_darin@me.com or 604-228-6488