Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, that unending bit over the summer, Harvest… I wonder how you see the Church year in terms of your children's programme?
1) Irrelevant: much more helpful to get on with organized uninterrupted biblical teaching.
2) Unmissable: every saint's day and festival should be taught, celebrated and appropriate colours nailed to the ecclesiastical mast.
3) Jolly good fun, especially when we get to celebrate the wackier events and characters.
4) What's a Church year?
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
George Santayana
Some bloggers seem to have a mini panic at the thought of Church seasons because they think the system is ‘Of Rome’ and therefore throw out all seasonal babies with the bathwater. Personally, I have no strong feelings either way, as our children's group tends to be in all-age services at the major festivals so we celebrate or not with the rest of the church. But I can see that the Church year has been worked out by wise people and road-tested by ordinary Christians over many centuries in their regular worship. It acknowledges that human beings live in a climate of seasonal change and that the 'crop rotation' of seasons is a good natural system of fertility and pest control. Fertility because there is a chance to rethink on a regular basis what God wants to say to us through many different stories about Jesus and about Christian discipleship; pest control because it stops us dwelling for too long on one aspect of God or of our discipleship and thereby growing complacent, stale or bored. The changing seasonal stories give an excellent framework for some sound all-encompassing teaching and worship in a children's group. With the possible exception of Septuagesima. (And to be fair, I'm not even convinced this still officially exists even in the Anglican Church.)
Some good reasons for taking notice of the Church year:
- It gives a seasonal rhythm to our worship, learning and discipleship, with tried and tested times of fasting and feasting and set stories to revisit with (one hopes) ever-increasing depth as we grow older.
- It encourages us to let the stories sink year by year into the very fabric of our lives, with the hope of Advent, the wonder of Christmas, the soul-searching of Lent, the joy of Easter and the acceptance of patient growing for ordinary time.
- It's very Jesus-centred, as we focus around events in his life and work, and encourages us to worship around events in his life.
- It's usually a good point of contact with the local community, as people on the fringe or outside church enjoy celebrating some of these seasons, too. (OK, perhaps the Transfiguration isn't widely known as a commercial feast, but Christmas and Easter are a good start.)
- It makes it easy to create a DIY programme if you're not following a set curriculum from a specific publisher (see Alison's excellent article on Programme Planning Made Easy).
- Even ‘ordinary time’ (roughly June to early December) includes some hefty celebrations that have a lot of mileage to explore with children: Trinity Sunday, the Transfiguration, Holy Cross, World Communion Sunday, Christ the King… all relate to key biblical stories that are worth visiting and revisiting.
- Quinquagesima, Sexagesima and Septuagesima are mellifluous words and are part of the fun of speaking English.
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau
The less helpful points are mostly practical outcomes:
- Your heart falters when you have to find a new angle on Mothering Sunday for yet another year.
- The great festivals are often holiday times when half the church is away visiting Granny.
- There is only one key story for times like Pentecost or Epiphany, so these are covered every year while juicy passages from Leviticus are left untouched from one end of the year to another.
- There are more important things for our children to worry about than checking the colour of the altar frontals in Lent or how to spell Quinquagesima. (Have I got it right?)
It's worth noticing
now that Easter in 2008 is on 23 March and comes slap bang in the middle of a school term for most people. Don't be reactionary about this and complain about the secularization of our country, instead see it as a tremendous opportunity for your church to help the local school to explore the wonderful season of Easter creatively and appropriately. Skim through our articles tab on the Barnabas website and see what exciting things churches have involved Martyn, Lucy, Alison and Esther in over previous Easters (for example ).
So what can we do to make the most of the Church Year, whatever sort of church we come from?
- Check out the seasonal resources from Barnabas and other publishers and start to build up a library.
- Check out the
Christian Year Ideas on the Barnabas website and the idea for a Church Year line.
- Work with your local school to put on an event in church or school that will help a year group or whole school experience what that season is about.
- Mark the season in your local school, church or public building with a quiet 'monument' to the season: a focal point with seasonal colours and objects to enjoy. Gloucester Diocese have produced some excellent packs of ideas.
- Put on a play! (See this article for more thoughts on the subject.)
- Encourage the children and parents / carers in your church to do something special and seasonal at home, for example go and fly a kite for Ascension Day; light a candle at teatime at Candlemas and tell the story that goes with that festival; give Auntie Ethel a present for Epiphany.
- See the season as a good excuse to tell that part of the story of Jesus if the material you planned for the day runs out too early or just won't work.
- Make an ongoing wall display with pictures for the different stories celebrated round the Church year.
- Tell the Godly Play Church year story.
- Make a habit of celebrating each festival with your group with suitable food for that time of year or story focus.
- The
website of Woodlands Junior School has a brilliantly clear section on the Christian Church year in their homework help.
- Revitalize the ancient traditions: whether you're a rural church or an urban one, have fun beating the parish boundaries on Rogation Sunday along with dogs, picnics, stilt walkers, floats, puppets… whatever your imagination can conjure up.
Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
Hamilton Wright Mabi
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