CHILDREN AND ANNUAL MEETINGS - from National Children's Adviser, Mary Hawes;

"At this time of year congregations are usually busy writing and gathering reports from activities of the past year and planning for the annual meeting. How are children involved in this important reflection and planning in your congregation? In our congregation we stay for a soup and sandwich lunch after worship and then move into the meeting. The children go into another room with their leaders, and bring their report back near the end of the meeting. One year we provided a sheet of mural paper and asked the kids to draw the things that they really liked about our church. Then we asked them to add any new things that they would like to see added, or hoped we might do and put a cloud shape around it. When we returned to the meeting and the children were telling what they had drawn, Matthew said he drew a man sitting on the toilet (which actually surprised me as I had not noticed it earlier). "And why did you draw that?" I asked hesitantly. "Because the men's bathroom smells and I don't like going in there," he replied. The women's washroom had been renovated two years earlier, but not the men's one. The men had not thought it a priority, but now they had a different perspective on it. It was done that year! Sometimes the children have made up a song to sing. There are many possibilities. Be creative and inclusive".

'THE SHACK' - BOOK REVIEW

Ben Witherington has a good review of ‘The Shack'

DAMARIS: LENT & EASTER RESOURCES

A full Lent Course based on our DVD Talking About... Jesus.

Videos for each day through Holy Week - FREE for you to republish on your church website and also available for free download for any subscriber to www.toolsfortalks.com - videos will include contributions from Rob Parsons (Care for the Family), Norman Kember (Iraq hostage), Robin Oake (author of Father Forgive), Jennifer Rees Larcombe (author and speaker), Greg Haslam (Westminster Chapel), Rachel Gardner (Romance Academy).   An Easter Special edition of www.deovox.com to help guide your devotional Bible Study at Easter.

For more details on all of these see www.sourcetalk.tv/lent

SUPPORTING CHRISTIANS IN EDUCATION

Useful resource for engaging with schools – and with Education Sunday coming up in January has some good ideas for involvement.Author: Trevor Cooling with Mark Greene (LICC , September 2008)
The blurb reads:
Supporting Christians in Education is a practical tool for Church Leaders and Youthworkers to help them to envision and resource teachers, pupils, parents and governors. No other single context involves so many of us, and this highly readable but insightful book lays out a compelling vision for Christian involvement and mission in education.
The book:
• Explains the values driving education today, summarises the pressures teachers face, and explores the curriculum from a Christian perspective.
• Explores the opportunities that today’s religious diversity provides.
• Includes a large number of down-to-earth ideas on how church leaders and their communities can practically support teachers, pupils and parents.

EVANGELISM LINEBACKER

For those of you who are bracketing out your faith from conversations, here’s a bizarre challenge and incentive to get more evangelistic…

CHRISTMAS LINEBACKER

Putting Christ back into Christmas

MIXED ECONOMY – FRESH EXPRESSIONS NEW JOURNAL

Fresh Expressions says: Mixed economy is our new annual journal which takes a serious look at what it means to have new forms of church living alongside more conventional congregations, follow the link for your FREE downloadable copy:

http://www.freshexpressions.org.uk//standard.asp?id=4122&cachefixer= 

THERE PROBABLY IS, YOU KNOW

In response to the Atheist Bus Campaign, Rev Evan Cockshaw who is a Pioneer Minister in West Brom (Lichfield Diocese) and part of the Diocesan Evangelism and Outreach Team has developed a website www.thereprobablyis.com

 

What he needs now is testimonies! He says, "The idea I had for this website was to simply provide the testimony of 100 or more Christians from all walks of life talking about why they believe in God. Not from an academic point of view so much as just honest testimony about experiences in life they've had which causes them to continue to believe in God to this day despite being intelligent and sensible people. So can we please be promoting this and asking for contributions from people finishing off the sentence "I believe in God because ..." in no more than 500 words. There is a form people can fill in on the website which will submit the contributions automatically."

 

He is also intending to produce a design for some postcards for churches to buy and hand out to people as the campaign hits their area.

Free Advent Resources

Damaris have made 24 short videos on an Advent theme (one for each day of Advent) and have decided to give them to you FREE. (Grateful thanks to WesleyOwen who have provided some funding for this, and will be publishing each video day-by-day on their website through Advent.)

You can preview some at www.damaris.org/advent where you will also see how anyone can freely view them and republish them online - this is ideal for personal blogs and church websites during advent any subscriber to www.toolsfortalks.com can freely download high resolution versions to show in meetings or events

And it doesn't stop there! We have also created an Advent Service resource pack which contains exciting all-age friendly activities for advent services - built around our downloadable advent videos. This resource pack and associated powerpoints is totally free for anyone to download - at www.damaris.org/advent