When life gradually returned to normality after the Covid pandemic, some things struggled to get off the ground again. For Christ Church Downend, this was the case for some of their connections with their local schools. The loss of relationships, combined with a desire to work more closely with other nearby schools, led the parish to employ a ‘Growing Faith Chaplain’.
Since June 2024, Julie Gardner has been working closely with these schools to reestablish old links and implement new ways to serve the needs of teachers and pupils. Her appointment has led to closer connections between church and schools and positive feedback from teachers, volunteers and pupils.
Christ Church’s vision for employing a Growing Faith Chaplain was to connect more closely with local schools as part of its three-year vision to grow younger, deeper and wider. This links with a wider national church vision of schools and churches working together for the benefit of children and families in their local communities. Julie began by establishing what the links were between the church and schools and investigating children’s spirituality as a natural route into schools, to meet their needs. The schools’ work had started in 2023 through the work of church volunteers that included an LLM, Julie and the church children’s worker. Since then, approaches have been adjusted for each school depending on its journey and how to best meet their needs.
Since Christ Church launched ‘Growing Faith’, volunteers have served the local schools in a growing number of ways. These have included prayer and reflective space workshops in five of the seven schools, continuing to run Experience events in church to help children understand major Christian festivals, providing collective worship in Christ Church and Bromley Heath infant and junior schools, leading a harvest festival assembly and hosting prayer workshops in the permanent prayer /reflective spaces which have been established in two schools. Two other schools have also expressed interest in opening a spiritual space. These spiritual spaces and activities support children of all faiths and none, promoting wellbeing and giving space to reflect. Some children at Christ Church Juniors have been able to develop their own prayer and reflective space activities with the chaplain to use in these spaces.
The chaplain visits four schools each term, either for lunchtime support or afternoons. New ventures have included some RE teaching, enabling school children to hear how a Christian’s faith impacts their life, why they find Jesus inspiring and how Jesus’ teaching through parables matched how he treated people in life. Children are able to ask questions to begin to explore the Christian faith and what they believe themselves.
Working with the Christians Against Poverty centre at Christ Church, the chaplain has liaised with schools to help families identified by senior staff as needing extra financial or practical support. One example of this was Christmas hampers made available to 17 families this year, including a £40 voucher to be spent as the families wished.
The whole Church has got behind the vision of connecting more closely with local schools, seen in the excellent response to a gift day, asking for donations for schools’ ministry. Schools have shared how well they feel supported, with connection between the heads, vicars, church governors and the chaplain and volunteer team going from strength to strength. Christ Church has also significantly increased the number of points of contact it has with families throughout the year and huge numbers of children are attending the ‘Jigsaw’ toddler group and after school provision of ‘tea and toast’ run by church members and the children’s and discipleship leads at the church.
An example of Christ Church's work with local schools is a recent workshop with years 5&6 at Christ Church Juniors. Members of the school's chaplaincy team led a range of activities focused on generosity. The children were encouraged to think about generosity to themselves, to others, to creation and to God and, to think about who has been generous to them. One of the tasks, called ‘Wisdom tiles’, gave the young people the chance to think about what God might be like. The pupils compiled a crossword like representation of attributes of God, linked to their name, using scrabble tiles. Some of the children have a faith, and some don’t. The fact that some of these characteristics are also human ones meant that everyone could participate. Another activity the young people took part in was ‘Lifeboat prayers’. They were asked the question ‘what would you hope or pray for, for people who have had to flee to a new place they have never been before? The children not only identified the physical necessities that we all, as human beings, need, but also the need for community and friendship. Children from Ukraine and whose families had come from Turkey originally related their experiences. Some children expressed hopes for those who arrived, while others wrote a prayer.
We pray for Christ Church as they continue to develop this vital area of ministry, sharing the love of Christ with young people and staff in local schools.