What's on offer to the young people in our communities
Each of churches provides a range of activities and groups for young people. See the tabs below for further details.
Bubble Church is a 30-minute service especially for young children and their families. During the service you sit together as a family on “bubbles” of carpet and share 30 minutes of songs, story, puppets and prayer. This is followed by a (free) light lunch.
Bubble Church at St Oswald’s Church Hall is on the second Sunday of each month at 11.30 am.
Sign up now at www.bubblechurch.org
Junior Church at St Oswald’s
See our pictures in the site’s gallery
Junior Church is for children aged 3 to 11 and under 3’s accompanied by an adult. We meet every Sunday in term time at St Oswald’s Church Hall just before 11am. We explore our faith together through activities, games, songs, drama and fun.
In Junior Church, as well as exploring our faith, we have a strong focus on faith in action. We have our own wildlife area in the graveyard where we have planted wildflowers, made a pond, hedgehog house and several bug hotels. He have also put up bird and bat boxes as part of our focus on caring for God’s wonderful creation.
We lead a benefice-wide challenge to collect things needed by a local charity throughout Lent and also visit the charity to learn more about their work. The charities we have supported so far have included Morecambe Bay Food Bank, the Olive Branch in Lancaster and the Lancaster and District Homeless Action Service.
Each year we also raise money for other charities with a cake stall after the Harvest Festival, decorating a tree as part of the annual Christmas Tree Festival as well as supporting church fundraising events by running our own stalls.
Although we spend a lot of our time exploring our faith apart from the congregation, we maintain strong links with our church family. We join the congregation in church each Sunday for communion and tell them what we have been doing at the end of the service. We also create displays about what we have been learning about, in the window as you enter the church. Once a term we join the congregation for an “All Together” service when we help in all sorts of ways, greeting, reading, singing, doing the offertory and collection and so on. We also join the congregation for Mothering Sunday and Harvest Festival and join in the Act of Remembrance at the War Memorial.
The two highlights of our year are the Palm Sunday workshop and our visit to Hyning Monastery. During the Palm Sunday workshop, we walk through the events of Easter with the disciples, sharing the last supper, praying in the garden of Gethsemane and creating an Easter Garden as we witness the events of Easter and then creating an art work to represent the risen Lord. When we visit Hyning Monastery, the sisters lead our session and then we join them for their midday office. This is followed by a Junior Church family picnic in the beautiful gardens, a wonderful opportunity to spend time enjoying one another’s company.
Visitors are always welcome at Junior Church and we are very happy for parents to stay if their child does not feel confident enough to come on their own.
For more information about Junior Church contact Vanessa Alpin on 07746 790979.
For more information about Junior Church contact Vanessa Alpin on 07746 790979.
Junior Choir at St Oswald’s
Junior Choir is open to children aged 9+
They meet on a Thursday 6 – 6.30pm in St Oswald’s Church
New singers always welcome!
Our new group for young people aged 9+
The Young Generations group was formed through the Looking Forward group where we noticed there was a lack of social events for our youth in the benefice.
We meet on the first Sunday of every month 6-8pm in St Oswald’s Church where we catch up with each other’s news, share a meal, play games, have craft activities, encourage discussions about ourselves and our community.
We met on 5th May and discussed games and activities for their upcoming fundraising coffee morning (6th July 10-12), made invitations, played the silly walk game, discussed the story of Noah, peace, peacemakers and war and were incredibly empathic towards war torn communities which we showed on a world map. We discussed prayers and words which might bring comfort and made these into Prayer Flags.
Pop in and have a look- it looks great!
Images from May 2024
Come and join us – contact Emma Brantley-Tziros for details on evbrantley@hotmail.com or 07968 672001
Activities linked to the Gospel reading are available for children every Sunday in St John’s Sunday school room.
Toys, books and games also available.