Sunday School Update

Sunday School is Coming Back
Sunday School Update

Sunday School Update

Dear Friends,

Here is an update from Highfields Church to let you know about something really exciting happening in a few weeks’ time on the 23rd of May.

We are restarting our Sunday schools for our morning services.

Now we've had a wonderful nine months of all age family services, over 30 of them and I want to say thank you so much to the leaders, the speakers, musicians, the puppeteers, actors, as well as Becca Nunes with her amazing animations that she's been making each week. 

It's been lovely to worship God together in our services as families, for those of us who've been part of them, but from the 23rd May we are restarting our Sunday school.

That's going to be great because it means that the children can learn in age-appropriate groups and adults and parents can engage with the sermon in a more focused way.

Now I need to let you know that things will be a little bit different from the 23rd of May.

Sunday school will be taking place at the 9:00am and the 10 30am services. We will still have a 12 o'clock service where there won't be Sunday school.

When Sunday school begins that will be the end of the streaming of all-age services because each of the three services at 9:00am 10 30am and 12noon will be regular services.

The big difference when Sunday school begins is that rather than the children starting in the main service and then heading on to their classes like we used to do, because of the fact that we need social distance and we need to make the most of the capacity of this chapel space, the children need to be dropped off in their venues before the start of the service.

Those venues will be opening 10 minutes before the start of the services, at 8:50am and 10:20am.  The three venues for Sunday School are going to be 1) Pierce Hall, 2) Coffee lounge and 3) the Triple Room (below the chapel).

The idea is that parents will queue up, drop the children off and then come into the chapel where they'll have a service and then at the end of the service reverse that to collect their children.

The other thing about this new arrangement is that due to the fact that there's going to be quite a lot of moving around the church building as well as cleaning of the spaces we will need to shorten the service length. For the last several months while we've been running these 9:00am, 10 30am and 12noon services they have been around one hour in length with a half an hour break just to do a little clean through, but now we've got to have people dropping children off and collecting children and so forth we actually need 45 minutes between the services to make that work. This will mean we need to reduce the service length to just 45 minutes, which is really disappointing because we love to sing lots of songs and engage in that way and get into God's word in a deep way and have lots of people involved in prayers and so forth, but we need to really streamline those services, so that will mean maybe a few songs or a shorter sermon.  There'll be fewer people involved but God willing this will be just for a couple of months as we get used to this new model of services.

Sunday morning services will still be 9:00am at 10 30am and 12noon but slightly shorter in length.  As we've been doing for the last few months, the booking will open on a Monday morning at nine o'clock and if you're a parent you need to book a space for your children as well.

Jo Deeley has asked me to say that we want to encourage you to stick with a service and run with it rather than moving around as that really helps with the children's ministry.  Also do make sure you turn up early on a Sunday morning rather than rushing in, because with the flow of people we will need to make sure we get our spaces 10 minutes before those service times.

If you can't make it in person on a Sunday morning, not to worry. We will still stream the10:30am middle service and of course we'll be continuing our evening services, currently Prayer and Praise at 7 30pm.  As a ministry team and elders we are discussing whether/when to bring back in-person services in the coming months.

Jess Sanders will be in touch with the parents of the Edge age young people (11- to 14-year-olds) to let them know what's going on. 

Please come and join us. We've got lots of spaces.  The purpose of all these extra services is to make as much capacity for the church family to gather, so we look forward to seeing you. 

God be with you.

Your brother,

Dave

Dave Gobbett
Lead Pastor
Highfields Church

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