Children, families, youth, and young adults' work - Resources

Connecting with your local school: School’s resource

This resource will help you think through your connection with your local school, primary or secondary, and will guide you through how you can serve your school, support it and make this an integral part of your mission and ministry throughout the year. To get your copy of the resource, click here.

Complete Prayer Space kit to borrow

Across the diocese, we have three prayer space kits for you to borrow to run your own prayer space in a school or church. They are hosted by three churches, Kings Norton, Rowley Regis, and Chelmsley Wood. Each has different equipment provided, and they create at least five individual prayer stations; each kit is different, so you have lots to choose from. To find out what each kit includes, or borrow a kit; please email Emma.

The Lord’s Prayer film resource

Emma has worked with colleagues in Church of England Birmingham to produce videos of children saying the Lord’s Prayer. The children are all from Anglican churches in Birmingham, and their families come from various countries. It’s a prayer resource that churches and schools can use that reflects some of the diversity of the Anglican church here in England. We hope that children and adults will see themselves reflected in the video or be inspired and perhaps challenged by the diversity represented.

As you’ll see, there are four films available: two are entirely in English, one has a musical backing track, and two start with the children saying the words ‘Our Father’ in their family language, and again one of these has the backing track. Each of the films has the words to the Lord’s prayer on the screen so that people can easily join in with the prayer or use the film to learn about this central prayer for Christians. To download them and the accompanying PDFs, click here.

Holiday Clubs: Households with primary school-aged children

During the pandemic, you could join Filler and Spiller, our Holiday Club characters, to play games, explore the bible, sing songs and get creative.

We recorded and produced content for these Holiday Clubs, which you can now use in your parishes whenever you like. It includes a beginning 30 minutes of ‘up front’ fun and games and a Bible message, followed by activities for you to do with your households. We then end with a final 15-minute roundoff and send it out. There is content for Easter, summer, and Advent.

To look at day 2 of our summer 2020 Holiday Club, check out our YouTube channel. 

If you would like more information, please contact Emma.

‘I Wonder’ Cards: Young people & Intergenerational - Advent & Christmas resources.

A series of ‘I wonder’ questions to interact with from 1-25 December. These are aimed at young people but can also be used with other age groups.

We have also created an online Advent Calendar where every day from 1st - 25th Dec, you can uncover a different 'I wonder' question as you walk through the whole nativity story from the books of Matthew and Luke. Share this link with the young people you know, in your youth group or with your family and friends and use the questions to journey to Christmas together. 

Advent Adventure: School’s resource

A film that inspires school children to engage with the nativity story through meeting the characters and cracking codes, along with other activities to complete, plus a take-home that can be brought to your church at a Christmas service.

This can be done in classrooms, and it is through your relationship with the school that this would make an impact. Its created so you could do an opening assembly and then leave the downloadable resources for the schools to use for themselves. The aim is that you can use it to invite households from school to come and be part of one of your Christmas services, Christingle or Crib service, bringing with them the take-home they created as part of the Advent Adventure.

This can be done at any point during Advent.

If you would like more information contact Emma.

Christingle – Intergenerational

Whether you are doing an inside or outside Christingle, we have many ideas for you, and they are all in one place for you to download and plan your service for this year. You can find them all here.

Contact Emma and watch for updates closer to Advent on the Parish Mission Support Facebook page for more information.

Holy Week in a Box: Intergenerational

A resource for all ages - a small box full of objects to help tell the story of the last week of Jesus’s life. Each day, there is something to take out of the box and a bible story to read or watch. The last day, Easter Sunday, allows you to invite households to join you at your Easter service and to use the objects in the box to tell the wonderful moment of resurrection.

Click here to download. 

Easter Trail: Intergenerational

Based around the Easter story with, of course, chocolate eggs this is a trail that will take households on the journey of the Last week of Jesus’ life. There are a couple versions of the trail, an under 5’s for use inside and an over 5’s outside trail for a garden or churchyard setting – it also comes with stickers to collect as you go around the trail.

Click here to download.

Light Trail: Intergenerational

Created during the lockdown, this resource returns by popular demand. For use around Halloween, the Light Trail is a series of Light Stops around the community for people to follow using a map, with Bible verses, stickers, and a question to ponder at each station. Your community can get involved, from being the Light Stops to participating in the trail.

There are two versions, the 2020 version with stickers can be found here, and the 2021 version was a collaboration with Muddy Church and can be found on their website. For more information contact Emma.

Take out Church: Intergenerational

Take out  Advent, Lent, and Summer are activities for households to do together once a week during the four weeks of Advent, six weeks of Lent, or during the summer holidays. All the activities link to the season and are intended to help households explore the themes of that season and create spaces for conversation and faith at home.

Click here to have a look and download them.

Under 5’s activity sheets

These are a series of four activity sheets to give out to parents or post on your social media pages for households under 5’s to have a go at. There is a Bath time one, a Storytime one, Quiet time, and a Toddler fun one. Click here to download them. 

Children and Communion – Children and Families

A resource to help church communities think through what it means to include children in communion and how to take all ages on a journey where the destination is admitting children to communion. Contact Emma Sargeant for more details, or fill in this form to register your interest.

Confirmation Resources – Young people

Our Bath and Wells, and Bristol Diocese colleagues have produced some excellent downloadable confirmation resources. If you have a young person or a group of young people preparing for confirmation and would like to use this resource, click here to download your version.

Share – Young people

Share is a 6-week bible study resource to be completed in pairs - with a young person and a mature Christian from the same church. It has been created to use online or in-person to enable churches to disciple their young people in a way that suits both parties. It is intended to kickstart an intergenerational, supportive relationship between the young person and the mature Christian. We hope this relationship will be beneficial and encourage the ongoing discipleship journey of both participants. For your copy of Share, email Emma.

Youth work in a box.

If you are considering setting up a youth group or piece of youth work from scratch, we have created a resource to get you started. It's called’ Youthwork in a Box’ and has all you need to help you think through what you want to create and how to do it. You can download it here, and once you have, please contact Emma if you have any questions about how to get going.

Bishop’s Youth Synod – Young people

Our Bishops gather a group of young people who represent the depth and breadth of young people within the Church of England Birmingham. They regularly meet with the Bishop to discuss topical issues and plan events and activities for other young people across the Church of England Birmingham. For more information about how young people from your church can join in, email Emma.

Living out Love – a youth group resource

We have created a series of short films to help young people think through issues of sexuality, gender, relationships, and justice based on the six pastoral principles, which are:

• Acknowledging Prejudice
• Speaking into silence
• Addressing ignorance
• Casting out fear
• Admitting hypocrisy
• Paying attention to power

They come in two versions, 30 min and 60 min versions; they can be used all together or as stand-alone sessions. To download your free copy, click here.