Children's work

…in school

At least 20,000 Birmingham Primary School children heard three or more Gospel centred Bible stories this year.  Plus, a further 48 children were taught from the Bible every week.  Praise the Lord!   

The Birmingham City Mission's children’s team makes first contact with primary school aged children by offering to lead the daily Act of Collective Worship or ‘assembly’.  During the year, the team delivered a termly assembly to 70 schools within the catchment area.  Stories told this year were ‘Cain and Abel’, ‘the boy Jesus at the Temple’, and ‘the official’s son’ (John 4). 200 assemblies were led in total, including 18 Christmas specials and 11 Easter specials.  ‘Specials’ are great fun and very well received: they are thirty-minute assemblies comprising a story, two puppet sketches and a quiz, game or song.

 For some children BCM gives a weekly input of Bible teaching.  We continued to run after-school clubs in two inner city schools, covering such topics as ‘respect’, ‘prayer’, ‘the life of David’ and ‘working together’, with material based on the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, 1 Samuel and Nehemiah.

Lessons, Moving On Roadshow and ‘Bus days’ mean that approximately 1,800 children had an opportunity to consider the claims of Christianity in more depth this year. 

 We have been deliberately less active in terms of delivering RE lessons, doing Easter and Christmas lessons only while waiting for the launch of the new Birmingham RE syllabus.  However, we visited six schools with the ‘Moving On Roadshow’, a two-hour programme that gives Year 6 pupils an opportunity to take stock spiritually before moving on to senior school. We were joined for ‘Moving On’ by the Red Balloon Theatre Company who helped us deliver Bible teaching in a variety of engaging styles.

 For schools outside Birmingham, we offer a bus programme that combines a whole school assembly with four lessons on the Bus exploring the work of BCM.  This year we delivered two days of Harvest lessons and two days of Easter lessons. 

… out of school 

When not in school, the BCM children’s team ‘camped’ with 48 children and had holiday club experiences with a further 280.  A fun year all round!

One of the ways we build upon our work in schools is by organising ‘junior camps’.  Last year we led two camps, one for children known to the BCM children’s team through church connections and the other for children who attend the weekly after-school clubs led by BCM.  The camps give an opportunity for more ‘in-depth’ teaching and learning a little about Christian living.

Two of the schools where we lead termly assemblies send their pupils to us for a half term holiday club called ‘Solid Rock’.  This is a very popular club based in one of the poorer areas of the city.  Approximately 150 children attended this year (75 in the mornings, 75 in the afternoons).  Sadly we had over 200 applications for places!

 In addition to working directly with children, the team also supported a number of churches in delivering Bible-centred holiday clubs in their locality.   This year’s themes were God’s People (Numbers), Close Encounters (Luke), Guess Who? (Mark) and Changes (Joseph).