Monthly ABC - All Age Breakfast Church?
On Friday the children and young people meet for their 'church', on a Sunday morning, another group of people meet for 'church'. Once a month, ABC Church aims to encourage children and young people and their parents to Sunday worship and bring the two congregations together.
At 9.15am, we meet together for breakfast. This usually comprises cereals, croissant, toast and tea, coffee and juice. At times we have been known to have egg and bacon 'butties'. Following breakfast we do activities at the tables (when they have been cleared).
We then move into the Worship Area where we can watch a DVD on the theme for the day.
We have been using a series of DVD's called "What's in the Bible with Buck Denver"; created by the same people who made "Veggie Tales".
The episodes introduced us to some interesting (and some whacky) characters: There's Buck Denver himself, Sunday School lady, Clive and Ian, Pastor Paul, and Phil Vischer (creator of the series) himself. We wonder how many others we can still remember.
We are now working generally from themes decided by the preacher but we ensure that whatever we do is crammed with information about the Bible, the stories, the characters and not only what happens, but why and how it all fits together. We find its great for the adults not just the children!
After the DVD, we try and pick out some of the teaching points from the DVD, re-capping to help us to understand what we've seen.
These activities will be taking place as people are arriving for the 10.30 part of worship. The first part of the worship is usually led by young people of the church.
At 10.30, we move into around 45 minutes of all-age worship, usually led by a visiting preacher, but worked on together with the Worship Team and linked to the DVD story in some way.
We have had good support from children, young people and some parents and grandparents, and good help and support from others in the Church. Mostly everyone who comes along for breakfast stays until 11.15, but folk are able to come and go as they need to; if a child has a footie match, they leave early, or a young family needs to go early that is OK, other worshippers tend to arrive at different times too.
This is how ABC was meant to be so that there would be at least some time on a Sunday morning when all worshippers are there together and can get to know each other and worship together!!