Beckie Dotson is Intergenerational Missioner in Sutton Hill parish, and has recently been appointed to the new role of Youth Hubs Coordinator for the north of the diocese. Here she talks about the opportunity to bring church and schools together. Beckie is pictured right, above, with Jane Tate, outside Lambeth Palace.
At Sutton Hill and Woodside Church, one of the ways that we engage with our communities is by creating opportunities for Church and Schools to meet. This is something that we have seen grow since Covid lockdown even though we had been doing it before. We have three schools in our Parish and so this was how we began, however, Covid affected the number of volunteers that we had and for a little while, we struggled to find enough people to cover enough of the sessions.
After Covid, things changed in our area with different circumstances. We found a way to pull together with the other Churches in the Deanery and support each other not only in ministry but creating opportunities. It worked because Churches come together from across the deanery, we all support each other and pull a team together of wonderful volunteers of different ages and backgrounds. It works because the vision to see our younger generations hear about the love of our Lord Jesus is shared by people in our Churches. Thanks to this amazing group of people, we can offer opportunities to six local primary schools, two of which are Church of England schools but the other four are not.
As Followers of Jesus, we have opportunities at certain times of the year where we can really create special events for our schools and invite them into a space where for some, they would never have been able to go. We use resources from Jumping Fish by the Diocese of Gloucester such as Experience Easter for Year 4 and Experience Harvest for Year 3, we also use It’s Your Move from Scripture Union, to help the Year 6’s to transition to Year 7 in secondary school. These have grown over the years with more schools, volunteers and more opportunities to share.
This is an area that continues to thrive and we are continuously seeking to find new ways to engage with local primary schools, so that we can share more about Jesus with them. We are growing teams with more volunteers and wanting to see how we can expand this ministry to create more opportunities with different year groups so that continuity throughout each young person’s time at school has some level of Church involvement, while also looking to go further as they move up to later years. This is an exciting time to pray and seek new opportunities to be a part of young people’s lives and if we all pull together as churches, we could be a part of many more opportunities to be able to do this and create more engagement spaces.
For more information about the resources mentioned or about Intergenerational Mission in general, please email Lizzie Hackney, Lead Intergenerational Missioner for the diocese.
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