One of the pictures I remember fondly from my childhood was from my father’s study. It was a picture of Jesus (admittedly a blond-haired blue eyed version J) sitting with a child on his lap, with other children sitting & standing around him. I loved the idea of Jesus welcoming the children and of being loved by Jesus. The image is from Matthew 19 v 14, where Jesus says ‘let the little children come to me, for to such is the kingdom of heaven.’

Unusually for the times, Jesus valued the kids and held them up as examples of faith.

That’s just one of the reasons why it’s important for us to be a church that’s welcoming & safe for children. We also want people with kids to be able to participate in church & know that their children are also in a place that’s fun and where they can grow in faith. I love it too that having kids around helps us adults to relax and laugh and have an excuse to be ‘childlike’ in the best sense of that word.

So we’re rebooting our Sunday morning kids’ program, starting today. We’ll have a ‘kids’ spot’ in the Gathering, then there’ll be a program for school aged kids. For the rest of this year we’ll do this fortnightly (Oct 28, Nov 11 etc.), with the children having the chance to share some time with the adults but also have their own learning space. If you’d like to help please speak to Graeme – you’ll need a Working with Children Clearance & to do some Safe Church training.                                   GT