Sam Thompson leads the children and family work at Christchurch in Stocksbridge (joined with the Christian Centre) and West Melton URC in Wath-upon-Dearne. This summer the churches both opened their doors for the first time to welcome children and families for holiday club. Read Sam’s report below:
‘At Christchurch and The Christian Centre we ran a 3-day holiday club using the URC Wisdom Quest materials. We had 24 children attending in total across the days with the highest attendance being on the Wednesday where there were 22 children. Of these 6 attend our Sunday junior church, 10 attend our weekday kids groups (at The Christian Centre) and the others are either completely new to us or siblings of playgroup children. We had volunteers from both churches and two young leaders as well as support from Mell from the Sheffield ministry team.
The whole week was great but some memorable moments that stood out include the concentration and competitiveness of the children when testing the strongest towers; the ‘interesting’ biscuit self portraits; the explorer costumes and, of course, the bouncy castle and pizza lunch! I particularly enjoyed our singing sessions and the enthusiastic rendition – with actions – of songs such as My Lighthouse and Be Bold.’
‘At West Melton URC we were starting from scratch so the holiday club was a real leap of faith! This was a small club running over one day with 4 children, one young leader and lots of adult volunteer support. We had a lovely day and the children enjoyed all of it. Some of the most memorable parts were the fruit salad relay game, the marshmallow families which became biscuit self portraits because I had bought mini marshmallows rather than large ones, the salt painting and, of course, the bouncy castle!
The children settled very quickly on the day and one arrived at church for our monthly all age service the following Sunday which we were very pleased to see. It was also fantastic that a number of our elderly congregation joined us for our celebration at the end of the day as well as the parents of the children. This opportunity for inter generational praise and socialising was a lovely way to end the day. ‘
Both of the holiday clubs were supported by grant funding from the URC. To find out more about what funding is available to support children and youth ministry, click here. If you are interested in running a holiday club in your church and would like to help, contact Megan Tillbrook at megancyp@urcyorkshire.org.uk