Do you want to involve children in the sacramental life of the church? This ideas-filled resource shows how to engage children and young people in worship, the Eucharist and other sacraments in ways that are profoundly missional and attractive.

Seasons like Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter are among the busiest for clergy and leaders of worship. This addition to the popular Creative Ideas series helps you plan seasonal worship more easily with a range of easy-to-use dramas and ideas to liven up worship, all based on the lectionary readings. It includes: • dramatic readings of lectionary readings and drama sketches for all seasons of the Christian year • short and snappy dramatic dialogues exploring biblical readings from a contemporary point of view • ideas for using our worship space more creatively • ideas for non-lectionary events such as Christingle • how to write creatively for worship • CD-Rom with downloadable resources Seasons covered include Advent, Christmas, Christingle, Epiphany, Lent, Mothering Sunday, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Harvest and Remembrance Sunday.

Young people can seem so worldly, cynical, resistant to traditional forms of evangelism, yet they have enormous capacity for the spiritual, an openness to faith and the imagination to approach God with awe and wonder. A majority of young people have no contact with the life of faith; they have not heard the stories of Christ and or had the opportunity to experience the powerful message of the Gospel. How can the church to proclaim the Gospel afresh for this generation with imagination, style and substance? This resource book is brimming with stories, techniques and ideas for creative mission and worship that engages children and young people. Based on extensive experience working with young people in churches, schools and youthwork settings, this is a toolkit which can help give voice to that first point of contact with young people, and the first faltering steps in evangelism.

Ask almost any priest what his or her biggest headache is and the answer is likely to be 'coming up with ideas for including children in worship'. Here is the answer to those prayers - a whole year's worth of activities and ideas complete with artwork and visual aids. These sixty outlines have been developed and used in an Anglican parish church over the last eight years by a professional educationalist, artist and experienced children's church leader. The worship outlines include simple children's liturgies and a complete lesson or story plan that harmonizes with what the adults are doing in church on the same day. Through fun ideas, children encounter a real aspect of the Christian faith focused on a theme to be found in the Gospel of the day. Each outline includes a variety of options which make them workable with small and large groups of children or single groups of mixed ages. Illustrated throughout, the text and artwork appears on the accompanying CD Rom in full colour for downloading and printing or copying.

“Spirituality” has become a buzzword in our contemporary culture as individuals strive for meaning and fulfillment. Its detachment from the church and conventional definitions of religious practice highlights the seeming redundancy of what has come before. “Spirituality” in this light signals a new attempt to find wholeness unencumbered by outmoded doctrines and stale rituals. It is the conviction of this publication that the intuition behind contemporary searches for spiritual reality is a good one. It acknowledges that there must be more to life than what secular media or consumerism might tell us. The joyful message of Perspectives on Prayer and Spirituality is that the spiritual quest is a valid one and worth exploring. There is treasure to be found. However, the surprise is that we must rediscover what we have left behind. In the words of G. K. Chesterton, “it is not that the Christian ideal has been tried and found wanting, rather it has been found difficult and left untried.” This book offers us the tools to mine the riches of Christian spirituality and find that elusive treasure. The title, Perspectives on Prayer and Spirituality, alerts us to the fact that life-giving spirituality stems from relationship with a personal God who can be known.

Find everything you need to lead a Family Eucharist in this comprehensive and versatile all-age resource. Building on the new Eucharistic Prayers for use in services with children, it balances formality and informality to help you create engaging worship for all. Easily adaptable for large and small all-age congregations, it offers ready-to-use worship ideas and service outlines for themed occasions throughout the year. Imaginatively-planned and well-structured Family Eucharists are a key part of growing churches, and this resource will give you both the structure and the confidence to lead all-age worship well. It includes: * advice on recruiting and training leaders * ways of getting children involved * a guide to creating a basic structure * suggestions for using music and props creatively * themed services for different seasons * imaginative service outlines for a variety of occasions, including a baptism in the context of a Eucharist * downloadable scripts and illustrations for use throughout the year

This innovative and imaginative resource offers learning and worship activities and whole service outlines to help churches engage with the outside world and increase connectedness with the communities where they are placed, whether rural or urban. Current trends encourage us to reconnect with nature – schools are building outdoor classrooms, 11,000 organizations belong to the Wild Network which encourages children to get outside, while Forest Church, the Eco-congregation and the rewilding spirituality movements reflect this trend in the church. Definitely not just for energetic outdoorsy types, it creatively blends the Christian year with the natural seasons – such as an all-age Advent outdoor adventure, creating an outdoor Easter garden, kite flying at Ascension, building life-size David and Goliath, going on a prayer pilgrimage, autumn leaves and tree ribbons for remembrance, and much more.