NEWS
Working in schools? Christmas teaching materials to share
Barnabas in Schools have produced an interesting and engaging range of resources for churches to share with schools they work with.
They’re all about how Christmas is celebrated around the world.
You can see the way that people in Peru celebrate the birth of Jesus HERE.
They have produces materials about other countries too, including Uganda and the Philippines.
Around the world Barnabas and celebrating Christmas as a global church…
The Barnabas in Schools Prayer
Jesus, you chose a child as a model for adult maturity and of God’s presence among us. Thank you for our schools with their teachers and children.
Together may they create: safe places for lives to flourish; happy places for wonder and discovery; hopeful places of peace and healing; stimulating places of learning and laughter; places where everyone feels valued and respected; places that offer security and stability to all; places where both old and young can find purpose and direction in life.
Amen
(photo courtesy of Catherine AGM at Unsplash)
Prison Advice and Care Trust carols service coming up soon in London
PACT with whom the Free Churches Group work alongside, as part of our work for Prisons Week, are hosting a carol service soon. PACT is the Prison and Advice Care Trust.
It is on 10th December at 7pm - held at Jesuit Church on Mount Street, London W1K 3AH
If you are in the London area and would like to go along, you can find out more information here.
(photo courtesy of Chad Madden at Unsplash)
Free worship resources for Advent and Christmas services, produced by the Joint Liturgical Group
New resources for worship are generally welcomed by worship leaders and the Joint Liturgical group has developed free to use material for three sequences ideally suited to a Sunday evening or weeknight celebration during Advent. Too often the distinction between the preparation for Christmas and the celebration of Christmas is lost. The material suggested by the group helps to preserve that distinction. The three sequences for Advent are:
Prepare the Way of the Lord
The Jesse Tree
Advent Refrains
Worship leaders are encouraged to consider this material and adapt the patterns offered to suit their local situations or simply incorporate some of the ideas or text offered into their own services.
The full text of these resources may be downloaded as a pdf file here.
In addition to the Advent resources, the Joint Liturgical group has produced a further four patterns for use during the Christmas & Epiphany Season. These four sequences are entitled:
The Promise Fulfilled
Christmas Eve (a traditional 9 Lessons and Carols)
Light to the Nations
The Glory of Christ Revealed
As with the Advent sequences, each pattern is offered with a number of options including ideas for readings, music, prayer and other elements drawing on texts and material from across the Churches.
The full text of these resources may also be downloaded as a pdf file here.
The Joint Liturgical Group (jlg.org.uk) exists as a creative working group. It offers rites and texts to the churches and ecumenical bodies, organises conferences, and advises and comments on worship matters. Work produced by the group is offered to churches to use as they see fit. The Free Churches Group (FCG) has been a member of the JLG since 1995. Whilst the larger Free Churches are members in their own right, the FCG representatives have sought to enhance the work of the group with some of the distinctive insights that can be drawn from the smaller, less traditionally liturgical, Free Churches.
For more information and resources please visit The Joint Liturgical Group website here.
General Election resources for churches gathered and shared...
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland have produced a useful compendium of the resources which have been prepared by churches, Christian and other organisations for the 2019 General Election, including those prepared by the Free Churches Group.
You can read and share them here.
For the FCG information, please see this link
Beyond the gates... celebrating 50 years of prison education
I used to work as a prison education contracts manager with a government funding agency. I witnessed, first hand, the power that education has to turn the lives around of those in prison. Education in prison has a profound impact on transforming the lives of those serving sentences, their relationships with their fellow prisoners and their families, as well as supporting the opportunities they can harness on their release. I had the privilege of visiting literacy and maths classes across prisons in the South East. The men and women in the classes were glad to be able to develop their skills and grow in confidence in their lives.
As an Open University graduate myself, I have also benefited greatly from distance learning opportunities which the OU provide and which many women and men in prisons have also studied and transformed their lives with… The OU had produced a short film about the work the OU has been doing in British prisons over the last half a century - watch the film here…
There are lots of ways you can get involved in prison work at your church or supporting ‘through the gate’ provision for prisoners on their release. Here are a couple of organisations you might be interested in:
Revd Sara Iles, FCG education assistant
Thank you God, that your church is rising up to obey your call to support men and women in prison. May we continue to proclaim the good news that your love and grace has no limits, and that no one is beyond hope! Amen