1 Simple Thing the Church of England Can Do To Be More Welcoming to Children

      Add a section entitled “Children’s names and dates of birth” to the Electoral Roll form.  At present, churches have no way of keeping track of the names, ages, and contact details of the children they work with, unless someone takes the trouble to hunt down all the parents and get the kids’ contact details from them.  When I arrived at St. George's, I had a list of "people on the electoral roll who have children" - but no information about which kids in Sunday School belonged with which names on the list, or how old the kids were.  You can comb through the Baptism registry for some of this information, but not every kid coming to your church was baptised there.

Final track list for the youth group CDs.

For anyone who's interested, here's the track list.  The CDs will be presented in church on the last day of term this year, as we bless the children for their Sunday School year that's finishing and pray for them over the summer.  We have a special prayer for those moving from Sunday School to Youth Group, and that's when I'll give out the CDs.

1	Dear God 2.0	The Roots
2	River of Dreams	Billy Joel
3	Hallelujah	Leonard Cohen (sung by Rufus Wainwright)
4	Precious Lord	Traditional
5	Sabbath Prayer	From the musical Fiddler on the Roof
6	Let It Be	The Beatles
7	Picture of Jesus	Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama
8	On the Willows	From the musical Godspell
9	Letter to God	Sheryl Crow
10	Down in Yon Forest	Steleeye Span
11	By the Rivers of Babylon	The Melodians (sung by Tracy Wells)
12	Turn, Turn, Turn	The Byrds
13	Finale	From the musical Les Miserables
14	The Lord of the Dance	Sydney Carter (sung by The Revels)
15	Amazing Grace	Sung by Judy Collins
16	Now is the Cool of the Day	Jean Ritchie

Synchronicity!

Yesterday, the younger Sunday School group was doing the story of the Road to Emmaeus.  There was a bread-tasting table, with different kinds of breads on it (naan, breadsticks, gluten-free lemon biscuits, matzoh, granary bread, etc.) and a table where they could make their own "road" by putting peanut butter or Nutella on a row of biscuits and covering them with "pebbles" (big sugar dots) or "dust" (brown sugar strands).  They could then draw the rest of the scene on the paper plate.

But just as the storytelling was finishing - with the words, "Jesus is alive! We knew him in the breaking of the bread!  Alleluia!" the main church had reached the Gospel acclamation, and the whole congregation sang out "Alleluia - Alleluia - Alleluia!" echoing the final word of the story.

You can't plan for this stuff - it has to just happen.

This is all you need to know about my job.

The menagerie on my desk is getting out of control. The two cat sculptures I bought have been joined by a random lost plastic sheep and two Playmobil foxes that became leaderless when the Noah figure who came with them was co-opted to become Jesus in Palm Sunday sand tray storytelling. (Hey, he was barefoot and had a beard and could sit on the Playmobil horse.)

"In the middle of the night ..."

I'm working on putting together a Mix CD for our older children (I will reveal myself right now as a child of the 80's by saying that the phrase "Mix CD" sounds awkward to me, and that I vastly prefer the sassy-sounding "Mix Tape."  Even if you're talking about a CD.  But that's just me).

It will feature songs from mainstream pop culture that are spiritually enriching.  This is not "Christian rock," but nor is it secular music - it straddles a midpoint, in which Judeo-Christian imagery is used to address the big questions of life, but without being explicitly religious.  Doubt and skepticism are common.

I want them to know that "faith" and "regular life" are not incompatible, without them feeling that they have to turn to the "Christian" alternative of mainstream culture in order to make that possible.  They can, as they become teenagers, go to regular bars and regular clubs and listen to regular music, and there find people, music, films, art, and theatre that addresses religion and spirituality.

Okay, so a Mix CD on its own isn't going to do all this, but it's a start.  We'll supplement it with regular trips to the theatre and cinema, and hopefully a book group at some point.

So far, I've got:

1. Billy Joel: "River of Dreams"
2. Leonard Cohen: "Hallelujah"
3. The Beatles: "Let It Be"
4. Tracy Wells' recording of "By the Rivers of Babylon"
5. "On the Willows" from Godspell

It's looking pretty meagre - any other suggestions?

The littlest of these.

I promised a post on the under-5's group, and have finally gotten around to taking some photos of their room to accompany it!  Sorry for the delay.

The session starts with singing "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands" - on each verse after the first one, we sing two of the children's names, e.g. "he's got George and Olivia in his hands," until each of the children have been named.  This welcomes the children individually and shows them that they are valued and known by name.  The helper has started the session by handing out nametags to all the children, to make this go more smoothly.  This is a good way of levelling the playing field between new children and those who have been coming for a while - everyone has a nametag, so there's never a feeling of "everyone else knows everyone's name, I don't know anyone's, and nobody knows mine."

The altar is visible on the left of this picture.  We share our space with a nursery, so this is their carpet and their displays, though the Eucharist poster is ours.

At the front of the carpet area where the children are sitting, we have a child-sized altar with a cloth over it, and a cross, candles, metal chalice and paten, and an icon of the Madonna and Child.  All these materials are non-breakable, and children can play with them during the free choice time.

Then we have our story.

We often use the feltboard, but sometimes we use a sand tray or a book, or even puppets.  Here's the sand tray set up for the Parable of the Lost Sheep:

Even when we're using the sand tray, I still have the feltboard up, with a basket of the "church and people" Beulah Land set, so children can "play church" during the free time if they like.

After the story, we have wondering time.  We tend to stick to very basic wondering questions with this age group:

"I wonder what your favourite part of the story was."

"I wonder if you could take out anything and still have all the story you need."

"I wonder what the most important part of the story was."

"I wonder how _____ felt when ______ happened."

"I wonder if you have any questions about the story."

Then the children have free choice time.  There is often a structured activity set up on one of the tables, for example, planting seeds, or decorating money boxes to collect money for charity during Lent, or making a picture of Jesus calming the storm, using streamers, crayons, and craft sticks.  This activity, while structured, is not proscriptive - 10 children will make 10 very different pictures, or 10 very different money boxes.  There will never be an activity where children assemble identical kits.

On the second table, we have toys.  These tend to stay roughly the same during the year, and may or may not relate to that day's story.  Here we have the Noah puzzle and an ark with the rainbow block, as well as the Egypt Playmobil set and the Easter sticker set from Alphabet Alley.  We also have a variety of Old Testament story 12 or 24-piece puzzles, including Moses in the Bulrushes, David and Goliath, etc.  Sometimes the Egypt toy or the harder puzzles will go up to the older Sunday School room for a while.

We also have toys on the carpet, which relate both to story and to liturgy, as well as a book corner with cushions.  After free play time, they come back together and pray.  Prayer time begins by singing (to the tune of Frere Jacques): "God the Father / God the Father / God the Son / God the Son / God the Holy Spirit / God the Holy Spirit / Three in One / Three in One," while making the sign of the cross.  Then they learn another song, which varies by the season, they receive their snack (raisins and/or crackers, to symbolise the Eucharist), receive a blessing ("The Almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, bless you and keep you" - while the adult makes a cross on the child's forehead), and return to church.

We have a Creation basket, with objects relating to each day of Creation, as well as a Christmas basket (not shown), an Easter basket (with palm cross, bird, sheep and donkey puppets, Jesus doll, caterpillar and butterfly puppets, toy bread, toy grapes, etc.), a Baptism basket (with a baby doll in a baptism dress, a shell, a dove ornament, and a candle), and the Good Shepherd basket (its contents have been co-opted for storytelling in this picture).  The cushions are gone this week for cleaning.  Against the back wall, we have another Noah's Ark, the Soft Church toy from Articles of Faith (I'd recommend getting the wooden one), the 4-in-1 Easter Storytelling Doll, and another Jesus doll, as well as our CD player.  The book corner is on the right of this picture.