Ideas for Outreach

Clipstone is a small ex-mining community on the edge of Mansfield. It has a secondary school, three primary schools and two churches. The Methodist Church has a small but prayerful congregation, rarely reaching double figures. However, it has a vision to reach out and, consequently, has employed me to work with them for a day a week.

 

The main feature of the spring term was a John Wesley Lifepath event in March. This was a project that I had been working on since September when I had a spare hour or two. The inspiration came from two sources : the well-established Time Travelling event at Southwell Minster and the similar Lifepath events run at key historical sites by Scripture Union. These activities draw hundreds of children to a venue to look at the history of faith in that area. Scripture Union has started to broaden this out to develop Lifepaths based on key historical figures and have published a series of tie-in books. Unsurprisingly, John Wesley was one of the people selected and is featured in Hard Rock by Fay Sampson.

 

At Clipstone, it would not be practical to run a large scale event. However, a smaller scale event was quite possible. The idea was to invite a class of children to the Methodist Church to take part in a series of activities based around the history of Methodism nationally and locally. This would respond to several points on the RE Agreed Syllabus encouraging schools to look at the lives of important Christians, to think about how Christians worship and to look at faith in the community. Whilst being educational, we would also communicate something of the love of Jesus as experienced by John Wesley and Methodists throughout the years.

 

Samuel Barlow School eagerly responded to the request to take part in the pilot event and agreed to send thirty or so year 6 children along. I had several possible dates for the event and checked on the internet to see if any of them had any significance in the Wesleys' lives. It turned out that one of the dates was actually the date of John Wesley's death. Obviously, this had to be the date of the event.

 

A team of helpers from Clipstone and around the circuit came together, throwing themselves into their assigned activities with enthusiasm. After being welcomed by John Wesley (looking suspiciously like the church's minister in a wig), the class of children experienced a presentation on the life of Wesley. Next came a treasure hunt looking for key features of the church - the font, the pulpit, the organ and so on.

 

Break time came next with a chance for the children. For the majority of the rest of the morning, the children rotated around three of four activities, run by different helpers. There was a chance to interview John Wesley himself and to find out the name of his horse! A second activity had the children looking at Charles Wesley's hymns and contributing lines to a hymn of their own. John Wesley's view of money was looked at in the next activity, reminding the children that Wesley worked out that he needed £28 a year to live on and gave the rest away. Here, they made money boxes with appropriate Wesleyan quotations. Finally, came a prayer activity, looking briefly at the Covenant Prayer before getting the children to write prayers on strips of paper (a different colour for each type of prayer) and then assembling them into a paper chain. A teacher was so enthusiastic that she said that she would be taking this idea back to the staff meeting that night. We also used the paper chains in the service the following Sunday.

 

After a final plenary, the children returned to school for lunch and definitely seemed to have had a good morning. One of the teachers later said "Wesley day was fab....children did follow up discussion..have stuck photos in literacy books. You should definitely do it with other schools/ groups etc. Very creative and imaginative. We particularly liked the prayer compiling on the (paper chains). We will be doing this in all classes in school. adapting to the year group." Looking ahead, it is definitely an activity that I would like to run again and is one that could also run at other churches in the circuit.

 

Since the event, I have written up the material so that it can be used by other churches. Although such an event obviously needs time and effort putting into it, the evidence is that even a small church with few resources can take it on. If anyone feels that they would like to run a similar event then please feel free to get in touch. If you would like a copy of the CD of resources, I am more than happy to provide one for £1 to cover costs. Alternatively, Scripture Union itself is more than happy to advise on Lifepath activities.

 

Alan Darlington