#dioceseofely

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Welcoming families and children back to church after christenings

More than 120,000 Church of England baptisms and services of thanksgiving for the gift of a child take place every year. Curate Rev Sid Bridges writes about a ‘fresh expression’ style church made up largely of families who have brought their children to be baptised at a christening, using open mic sessions, story telling, 'action' prayers and time to get to know one another.

Around 60 families a year bring their children for christening at Holy Trinity, Orton Longueville and St Mary’s Orton Waterville in Peterborough but up until recently relatively few returned to the church. Rev Sid Bridges, assistant curate, set up ‘Refresh’ - meeting on Sunday afternoons in St Mary’s Church where the space has been recreated to welcome families with young children.

“The gathering follows a structure which includes Bible stories, prayers and reflective space all finished off with time to hang out whilst sharing food and drink. In recent months the session has started with a Bible story with an open mic for children and parents to discuss its meaning. We don’t just read a Bible passage, we tell the story and ask afterwards ‘what is the wisdom in this?’ and ask the children – and the parents – what they think about it. Where you might be discussing the story of Jonah and the whale, we will ask if there is a time in your life that you have felt trapped, or avoided a tough decision. What wisdom can we take from this story to apply in our own lives? We then have a chalk board where we encourage people to put their prayer requests up – people write their prayers up and we pray for them. They might just put a word down or the name of a family member – whatever they write, we pray it.

“At the last session there were 52 people present, including 32 children. I worked out that there were nine baptismal families, these are not people who have been church goers, they are not in our other congregations, they are all people who have been outside our existing worshipping communities. It is really exciting seeing them enjoying the church space and worshipping together.”

- Rev Sid Bridges

[cofecomms]

Reaching a digital generation

Video blogging, or ‘Vlogging’ is becoming increasingly popular for sharing stories, discussion, debate and deliberation. Young adult “Millennials” - those born after 1980 - are now as likely to use YouTube as they are Google to find what they are looking for online, proving that video and image are key components of our visually orientated lives. The Gabriel Collective was launched at the 2015 Premier Digital Conference and is a Collective of Christian young adults who want to see Millennials empowered to use online video to reach a digital generation. 

Backed by the Church of England in response to the need to connect with young adults in a new and engaging way, our aim is to resource, equip and network a group of 18-35 year old digital story tellers to share their everyday life and their Christian faith online with their peers. Whether that's football, ballet, music or sharing a personal journey like preparing to get married or learning to surf, it’s about encouraging people to talk about what they're passionate about and how following Jesus has an impact on their lives. Added to the fact that the Collective believes that everyone has a unique group of people who think they’re worth listening to, we want to enable Millennials to be open and intentional about their faith. In doing so we want to empower a network that keeps growing and reaching out to a 21st century digital generation. Rachel Jordan, National Adviser for Mission and Evangelism for the Church of England, is facilitating the Collective; “We’re really excited about the Gabriel Collective; we’re passionate to see more Christians share their lives and in particular their faith online. We’re looking for people who are great at telling stories and love Jesus, they don’t need to have previous vlogging experience, just a willingness to join in and have a go”. 

As a collective we hosted our first event in Leicester Square in London last weekend (12th March). Thirty young adults aged 18-35, gathered to meet, network and get to know one another. Some were already vlogging and others were there to get started.  After initial introductions, people moved round the room to choose three TED talks to listen to. Subjects included; social media, video techniques, post production, dealing with trolls, storytelling, how to start a YouTube channel and an introduction to vlogging.  It was great to hear people connecting with what was being said and feeling inspired. So to put all of that into action, we divided people into groups and set them the challenge to go out into central London and make a vlog. Each group had two hours to plan, film and edit a vlog in preparation to be screened back at Gabriel Collective HQ in the Slug and Lettuce. Each member of the group was asked to be on camera and to share something of themselves. They were also given an envelope with a fixed amount of money inside with the instruction to spend it in a way that would add to the vlog. Three awards were up for grabs too on their return, ‘funniest’, ‘best story’ and ‘most blessing’. And so five groups headed out into Leicester Square and the results were fantastic! As you can imagine, everyone took a different approach. One group vlogged about radical generosity - trying to overpay for goods in local shops, another asked people who they should buy a coffee for and why and another asked members of the public what their perception of Jesus was in return for a cream egg. It was really encouraging to see how easy it can be to vlog and the importance of Millennial Christians occupying digital platforms, as ordinary people sharing extra ordinary stories.

If you are aged 18-35 years old and would like to get involved, we’d love to hear from you! We want to see the collective grow over time and hope to hold similar events in other parts of the UK in the future. In the meantime you can visit www.gabrielcollective.org, follow @thegabrielco on Twitter and Instagram, check out our YouTube channel or use #gabrielONE to find out more about what we got up to at last Saturdays event.

- Revd Ed Olsworth-Peter, Adviser for Fresh Expressions of Church and Young Adults, Diocese of Ely, and Gabriel Collective member.

[stpeterslodge]

On Friday 16th January, our Opus Gratiae Youth Group met in St Peter's Parish Church Hall for the first time in 2015. A wonderful night! Initially only 6 children were present. So we sat in a circle of plastic chairs and prayed to God for more children to join us. Within 2 minutes of the prayer our numbers swelled and skyrocketed to 18 children. Our prayers then changed to: 'Thank you Lord... that's enough!' The theme of our traditional Friday night youth group was about meeting and seeing the God in Christ who calls us to himself. After some mad tearing-about games, we settled into a drawing workshop with Father Paul - 'Drawing is like prayer - God wants us to see our world and each other in his light'; word games with Sister Wendy and dramatic story-telling and theatre (the conversion of St. Paul from the Acts of the Apostles). We talked about the annual National Children's Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in early March: there was a great interest in going with many children having been last year. We asked the children what activities they would like to do, as a youth group family, this year. Thank you to Sister Wendy and Brother James for pastoral care and crowd management, and Janet and June for refreshments and general assistance. In all that we do together this year, as a youth group, and for our children and families - may Our Lady of Walsingham pray for us.