At the end of the school term, we caught up with Lloyd, our Schools Team Leader, to see what schools work has looked like during the pandemic.
“After what seemed like a lifetime, we were finally welcomed back into a school at Easter to work on a project with Off The Fence Schools and Youth Team. The last year and a half has been a struggle in many ways, especially with the biggest frustration of not being able to work directly with the children of this city. When lockdown hit last March, it caught us by surprise. We had performed our Easter assembly twice in schools before our tour was cut short, schools closed, and homeworking became the new normal. Thankfully, we had recorded our presentation just in case one of us were to get ill. We sent out the digital version of the assembly to the schools, who sent it to their pupils who were now being home-schooled.
Things were changing at Brighton and Hove City Mission. Brighton Food Bank couldn’t run as normal. All clients and volunteers were no longer able to enter our building and two members of the team had to isolate. The demand on the service had also gone up too, with people requesting help from a whole range of circumstances. Every remaining staff member was moved into supporting the food bank. A new food parcel delivery system was created. After speaking with the client over the phone, dietary requirements and food needs were added to a form, the parcel ‘picked’ from our food store, and sent on the way with a volunteer driver. During the early days of the first lockdown, the food bank became the priority. Conversations with schools had almost completely ceased since emailing out our Easter Assembly.
However, amazingly, we were contacted by two schools that we support to ask if we could tell some Bible stories for their online assemblies that they had been sending to their pupils. Whilst working in the food bank in separate work bubbles, Helen and I were able to find time to record the stories separately in our own homes.
After many online meetings, Helen and I decided we would do our first ‘proper’ online assembly in June, rather than uploading another story from the Bible to YouTube. The assemblies would be like those we once did in person, with an introduction, story, reflection, and prayer. The initial plan was to produce these as and when we would perform our assembly tours and around the same themes; Christmas, Easter, Summer (moving on/changes), and Harvest. However, by the time we had reached October the food bank was requiring less of our time, staff were coming back from isolation, and more staff had been recruited, meaning we were able to give more time to schools. At the end of the year, we reviewed what we had done and, seeing that there wasn’t really an end to the pandemic in sight, we decided to create monthly assemblies around school values. We also saw this as a fantastic opportunity to send the assemblies to every primary school within the city. It was a great way to introduce who we are and share the good news of Jesus with more children and staff across our city.
This year has really given us space to think about and refine the work that we do in schools, we don’t want to be replicating Christian teaching that is already happening. With this approach, we highlighted ten schools who have been very active and open with us during the pandemic. We approached them to see if they would be interested in having Easter Week Journal Packs for all the children in their school and they all said yes! The packs contained a journal with part of the Easter story to read each day and various activities to complete, materials to complete the activities, and a little chocolate egg. We got the Easter story into the hands of over 2500 children! We couldn’t have done this without the support of the local church. We contacted our partner churches, that were near each of the schools, asking if they would like to contribute towards the project. The generous donations from churches, alongside those from individuals, completely covered the cost of the project. Praise the Lord!
So, this brings us to what I shared at the beginning of this article. Led by God, we’ve seen and done some amazing things this year, but nothing quite beats working face to face with children. It was such a blessing to be back in person, it almost felt like we would never be back!
Since Easter, we have continued producing our online monthly assemblies, whilst visiting schools. As I met with each headteacher, they all seemed to be asking me the same thing: ‘can you help us teach on the Bible?’ This has led to the creation of three presentations: What is the Bible? What is the overview of the Bible? How does the Bible help us? During the last term, we were able to trial these brand new lessons in two schools and we are looking forward to sharing them with many others in the new academic year.
Although it was a frustrating year and a half in many aspects, we can look back and see how God has been in it. He has helped us refine our work, reach out to many more schools, and provide new evangelistic opportunities. We may have been distant from the children and staff of schools for over a year, but God is still God and his work will continue to go on having an impact in this city.”