Experience Pentecost

On 20th and 21st May our two church schools visited St John the Baptist and St Andrew’s churches to “Experience Pentecost” – an opportunity to find out more about the Holy Spirit in an interactive way. On each day, we had six stations set up both inside and outside the church, to provide multi-sensory ways to engage the children imaginatively with the events surrounding Pentecost.

During the day, each Year class visited their linked church for 40–50 minutes. Having experienced the first session outdoors entitled Waiting (for the Holy Spirit to come) with the Vicar and decorating the trees and surrounding area with paper doves – many church goers and visitors will have seen these in place – they then split into four groups to explore the next stations on their journey. These took place inside the church and covered Receiving (when the Holy Spirit came), Telling (after the Spirit came, believers began to tell others), Doing (believers started to take action) and Sharing (they began to work together).

The groups came together for a final station called Growing where they explored with the Vicar how the early Christian Church began to grow.

As one of the volunteers, it was really interesting to see how a Year 6 youngster (around 10 years old) had grown in their understanding of Pentecost over their years of learning about this important time in the Church year compared with a child from Year 2 (around 6 years old). The children were interested and a pleasure to engage with. Each volunteer covered their particular station four times for the six St John the Baptist classes and seven St Andrew’s classes. As you can imagine, we each knew our own “station” very well by the end of the days!

A worthwhile Pentecost Experience for us all.

Lynne Griffiths