Hi all,
I have just completed my first term since starting, I am only days away from officially racking up 3 months at this wonderful church, and I feel like I have hit the ground running. Before continuing, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone here at church, you have all been incredibly wonderful and welcoming to Ruth, Nathaniel and myself and we feel so blessed by you all.
This church is a quite a bit bigger than the last church we were at and is probably about the biggest I have ever served and worshipped in. This has made it quite daunting to step into as I have a tendency to forget names quite easily, and to remember so many is very difficult. Thank you everyone for your patience on that one.
This term has also seen me start to take up my responsibilities, I have been getting involved in Kids Church on a Sunday evening and Sunday School in the mornings and it has been great fun to get to know all the wonderful kids, leaders and parents there.
One of the things that I have heard repeatedly from these two groups has been the need for more clarity of direction when it comes to teaching material. As such Murray and I have been sorting this out and we have decided to use a curriculum across our Sunday Services , which we are modifying from a British curriculum called Roots. The material follows the lectionary readings, just like we do on our Sunday services.
The idea, and we hope you agree that it is a good one, is that all people who come to our church on a sunday, no matter the age, the demographic or the type of worship they are engaged in will study the same set of scriptures. This is so that families, and the greater church community by extension, will be able to engage with each other over the learning that has occurred, giving a frame of reference with which to discuss the scriptures and what God wants to do in their lives. We are still ironing out the kinks in the system, but are very excited and well on our way to achieving a sound structure on which to build our sunday children's worship.
The second area that I have been most busy with has been the re establishment of KOG. KOG, for those who don’t know is our midweek youth group for kids in yrs 3-6, and meets on a friday night from 5pm until 6pm.
KOG has been amazing, we have only had small numbers but they have been consistent and an absolute blessing. At KOG this term we have started with Who is Jesus? as our theme of study, focusing mainly on Luke’s Gospel. a couple of other things we have done for KOG has been the introduction of the But Rob…Box? where kids can ask questions that they are either embarrassed about, or are slightly off topic and I will endeavour to answer them. I have been blown away by the quality of the questions and hope in the near future to post the questions and my responses up on this blog.
Finally not to be neglected is the High School Youth, we have not forgotten these awesome kids and I have attended some social outings organised by the parents of the parish this last term in a hope to get to know these kids better. Next term we will hopefully be kicking off with a Cell Group for these teens as a starting point for building a strong and wholesome Youth ministry. More on that in later posts.
God bless
Rob Woolfrey