In this act of worship we explore and celebrate real 21st century motherhood, with a view to supporting and empowering mothers and all people in mothering roles. Three biblical extracts are integrated to weave the sacred into the secular, enabling people to see the Gospels’ relevance in everyday life.
Father's Day (Sunday 19 June)
Fun ideas for an activity session for children, families and young people
Father's Day gives us a great opportunity to explore and celebrate fatherhood and have some fun together. You can use these ideas to organise an event for children and their dads, step-dads or grandads, or for whole families.They include games and craft activities for children, and reflections and prayers for young people.
The resources lead you, day by day, through the events of Holy Week. Each 'day' recalls a particular event, and is set in the context of worship, music readings, prayers, and a visual focus and responsive action, designed to engage everyone.
Suitable for all ages, a dramatic retelling of the events of Pentecost, for two voices.
Simple worship activity for all ages
These ideas are written to engage different ages, spiritual styles and learning preferences in worship, and help everyone to make a personal response to the reading.
Invite the congregation to join in the actions, and repeat these words after each spoken phrase: Thank you, God, for your ever-present Spirit
(make wave motions with hands)
In the beginning your Spirit hovered over the waters.
(make two fingers on each hand do a walking motion)
Later your Spirit called to Sarah and Abraham to a new journey with you.
(blow as hard as you can)
As time went on your Spirit spoke through the prophet Ezekiel and brought dry bones to life.
(make a beckoning motion)
At the dawn of a new era your Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness.
(create a heart shape with your hands)
Jesus promised that your Spirit would never leave all who love him and keep his commandments.
Responding to the Bible reading each week
Each week the ROOTS resources offer ideas for activities and participation during worship, helping everyone to make a personal response to the reading. The response activities for 24-30 April 2016 explore Jesus's farewell to his disciples from John's gospel and the giving of a new commandment - to love one another.
In Adult & All Age, Active worship offers ideas to engage different ages, spiritual styles and learning preferences.
In Children & Young People, it's easy to keep sessions fresh and varied, with a range of different types of activities, games and prayers, which provide plenty of material for both Sunday and midweek. The Explore & respond resources follow the simple format of Do, Make, Pray and Sing.
Welcome to our ‘Ready-to-use’ meeting guide section, here we have a wide selection of session plans which you can use for your youth group, the sessions are set out to contain a variety of activities and generally revolve around a key theme, often a life issue or biblical issue. We hope you find these useful, we are always adding to these meeting guides so be sure to keep checking back here for updates.
ROOTS resources and magazine is a great way to link in our program to the C of E's bible readings and the lectionary. ROOTS publish a monthly newsletter for free which anyone can sign up too.
This months latest update can be found below.
Sacred and secular
Bringing a Christian voice to secular festivals
We shape our lives through the sacred and secular calendars, using them to mark out time and find meaning in the rhythms and patterns of the year. Our celebrations are a mixture of Christian and secular: Easter, Valentine's Day, Pentecost and Remembrance Sunday.
How can we bring a Christian voice to the festivals, celebrations and commemorations that take place outside our churches? Tim Stratford, Archdeacon of Leicester, has written an introductory article which explores how weaving the sacred into the secular can help to make sense of our human condition, our joys and fears.
This simple diagram shows the rhythms and patterns of the lectionary and secular years.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is traditionally observed from 18-25 January. We're delighted to have produced the worship resources for the Week, in conjunction with our ecumenical partners Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI).
On our journey to our ‘Easter encounter’ with Jesus, we will hear some sad and searching stories that might make us feel like crying, as Jesus did. So each week we will make and decorate a teardrop, and create a road of tears to represent our journey to Jerusalem. On Easter Day we will transform the road of tears into flowers of joy and praise.
This Lenten journey has been devised by Elaine Halls, a Methodist minister based in Jersey.
Responding to the Bible reading each week
Each week the ROOTS resources offer ideas for activities and participation during worship, helping everyone to make a personal response to the reading. The response activities for 24-30 April 2016 explore Jesus's farewell to his disciples from John's gospel and the giving of a new commandment - to love one another.
In Adult & All Age, Active worship offers ideas to engage different ages, spiritual styles and learning preferences, including a Simple worship activity for all ages, often something that people can participate in from their seat.
In Children & Young People, it's easy to keep sessions fresh and varied, with a range of different types of activities, games and prayers, which provide plenty of material for both Sunday and midweek. The Explore & respond resources follow the simple format of Do, Make, Pray and Sing.
Youth for Christ have published some great materials that can help in developing activities / talks at Brigade. To access the site click the following link: www.request.org.uk
ROOTS have recently published some great resources that companies can use. 
