How do you bring the Bible to life and help children remember the stories and lessons Jesus gave us?  Welcome to the Engage Assembly Team – it’s exactly what they do!

This year our harvest assembly run took the parable of the sower to 14 primary schools across the Woking area; it’s a wonderful story for harvest – found in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and also connected through John’s gospels. It tells of seeds sown in a variety of soils and their varying growth success.

How do we relate this to God in a way that has meaning to children? We talk about listening to God’s “word seeds” (whether we read them or hear someone tell us about them). We look at how we can stray or ultimately stay on the path set out for us in the Bible by listening to God’s “word seeds” and growing them in the “perfect conditions” for us to flourish.

We had an eye-catching backdrop, a farmer “throwing perfectly good seeds all over the place”. Some were gobbled up by hungry chickens”.  Some were hidden amongst stones in a sheep field. Some were smothered by “lovely, juicy, prickly thistles” in the donkey’s “best thistle patch”. And some landed in lovely well-prepared, fertile soil – perfect for barley seeds to grow – watched from the next field by some very enthusiastic pigs.

The team threw themselves into the roles of the farmyard friends, bringing much laughter and, of course, memorable reasons for growth (or not) of the farmer’s barley seeds. This assembly was narrated between scenes to bring the story together and the brilliant script engaged both staff and pupils.

Our harvest theme of listening and looking out for God’s “word seeds” has given pupils and staff lots to talk about and take back to the classroom after assembly.

As always, we are encouraged by the response and warm welcomes we receive in schools – we are always asked when the next visit will be!

Doesn’t this sound like an awesome way to share our faith and inspire conversation about God’s word? Could you help? We’d love more members on our assembly team, whether in school, or behind the scenes, prop making: how about you joining us?

A passion to support young people in their well-being and mental health

We are passionate at Engage about supporting young people in their wellbeing and mental health.

An important part of this support is one-to-one mentoring with students dealing with difficult challenges.

Our Mentoring Lead, Bisi Olaye, explained: “Through mentoring and other activities with young people, we recognised friendship as an area that many of them found challenging.

“To address this, we began running workshops on ‘Developing and Maintaining Healthy Friendships’.”

It comprises six weekly sessions, each with a separate theme: “Course introduction”; “Friendship types and levels”; “Deepening friendships”; “Handling conflicts”; “Self-care” and “Course summary”.

Bisi added: “Through these workshops we are equipping young people with knowledge and skills they can use to strengthen personal relationships, which improves their well-being.”

Engage has run two sets of the workshop this year.

They have been greatly appreciated by those who attended. This comment by one student is typical of the grateful feedback given by many of them: “It has helped my friendships a lot and it’s a good group to be part of”.

The workshops are clearly enormously useful to young people. Bisi confirmed she will be running more of them in the next academic year.

Encounter: an evening to connect and encourage

Grace, a student who attended our Encounter event in October, writes:

Encounter was a brilliant event. Many young people – newcomers and returners – gathered in worship.

We had great food (hot dogs were a winner!) and games such as table tennis and jenga before- hand, which helped us to meet other young Christians from the area and get to know each other better.

The worship was filled with joy, with powerful worship music provided by Woodhill’s band, meaning that the room was filled with young people praising the name
of Jesus.

Osai Ojigho provided an inspiring message on how we are called to different places, through the story of how she came to work for Christian aid.  This showed us how God’s plan is often unexpected and how, by trusting in him and where he calls us to, we can make great changes in the world, similar to how Christian Aid
now provides so much aid to people in need.

We had a fun game and then activities which helped us to dive into the message of where we are called to, with each person identifying which part of Christ’s body they might fit into and standing by that particular part, whether it be empathy or speaking out to others.

Through this we were challenged to think how we can use our gifts to spread the love of Jesus, and how gifts may come in many different forms. At the end of the night we were given thoughtfully-made gift bags, with material to help us to spread our faith (and Haribo which was also a winner). The worship band played the song ‘Joy’ to finish which was accompanied by enthusiastic dancing and singing from many participants, giving the session a brilliant end.

Overall, Encounter was an event that helped young people across Woking to meet other young people of faith, connect through their joint worship, and encouraged further sharing of faith to those around us.

You can watch our assemblies videos on YouTube

Did you know we record all our assembly dramas for Primary schools and you can watch them on our YouTube channel?  To see all our videos click here.