CPCC History
Helen McGlinchey - Recollections of CPCC and Kidzchurch
When we came to Gorleston for Paddy to take up the post as Associate Minister at St Andrews, the Anglican parish church in Gorleston, part of the job description had been to engage in outreach in the Cliff Park area where we were to live. It became clear quickly that it was the Cliff Park schools which were the main focal point for any community activities in the area. Apart from the schools, there was only one shop, Costcutters, and a pub, which closed soon after we arrived in the area.
George Lings, from the Church Army and an expert on church planting, was of great help to us as a team. He guided us through the process of thinking about what would be involved in establishing a church at Cliff Park and in helpfully articulating various issues we needed to think through and work out together.
Paddy worked at putting the team together on the Anglican side, and Rick Hughes, the Baptist pastor in Gorleston at that time, did the same on the Baptist side. The aim was to get 15 people from both the Anglican and the Baptist churches who would commit to the joint project of establishing a joint Anglican-Baptist church plant, to meet in the middle school. We had a nine-month lead-in, deciding that the best time to launch the church would be the beginning of the new millennium. Having Tony Mallion, a presenter on BBC Radio Norfolk, on our team, was a great asset in publicity around the time of the launch.
During the lead-in to the launch, we undertook an evangelism course. Having the church plant in mind certainly sharpened our focus, and our whole vision was to reach out to the unchurched.
For my own part, I had a particular vision for the children’s work. We had children of our own: Paul, Patrick and Tim, at the First and Middle Schools. Judy Harvey, Connie Blossfeldt and I went to visit St Thomas Crookes church in Sheffield, where they had a thriving Kidzchurch. The Kidzchurch model was first developed in New York, and then in Sheffield. Although our much humbler, small town setting of Gorleston was very different from the city, we found the whole approach and vision for engaging children very attractive – reaching out to them, wanting to give them a positive experience of church and encouraging them in a creative way to engage with faith and loving God. That visit gave the three of us, and through us the group that was to become the Kidzchurch leaders team, a real vision for using that approach in our very different situation in Gorleston. It was a creative and engaging model, both for the leaders and the children.
The idea of moving from the more traditional Sunday School format to a larger group format was a new concept for us all. It was a challenge to work out how to keep the entire range of primary school age children together in one group, while maintaining discipline and keeping the attention of all the children. We found many online and printed resources which really helped us all to develop interactive and creative ways of both making the experience of church for the children a positive one – they could play games and have fun – while also engaging them in learning about God and how to pray. The format of games, creative prayer ideas and teaching input worked well. The games were definitely noisy, but generally speaking, the children did quieten down when it came to the teaching input. A system of displaying happy or sad faces (on mounted paper plates, as I recall), depending on how well behaved the children were, together with a system of rewards or prizes of mini chocolate bars, all helped keep a sense of order.
Providing Kidzchurch most Sundays entailed working closely as a team, and we had monthly leaders’ meetings. The meetings had a both a practical and a pastoral focus. They were planning meetings, but they also provided an opportunity for the leaders to share issues in their own lives, which sometimes had a bearing on how much time and energy they could give to Kidzchurch. Personally, as the coordinator of Kidzchurch, I remember feeling the tension between wanting to have sufficient cover for Kidzchurch from week to week, and yet also feeling for the leaders working under particular pressures at times and needing to get a break. It was a difficult balance to reach, and probably still is, to ensure adequate cover and protect leaders from burn-out!
I do remember that the children really enjoyed Kidzchurch, and I think they had a definite sense of identity within that. The fact that the church was meeting in the school, and that the schools were very open to the church, really helped build relationships and make it accessible for families to be involved.
I also remember the development of All Age Worship, and the contribution of the Kidzchurch team to that. I remember, for example, playing the trifle game and having adults run round the assembly hall and being fed spoonfuls of trifle! I do feel, looking back on it now, that Kidzchurch was about including the children and valuing them in the whole life of the church.
At the beginning, we did have a visiting programme, where Kidzchurch leaders would made regular visits to the children in their own homes. While this was a very helpful thing to do to build relationships with the children and their families, it was a very substantial time commitment for the already hard-working leaders. So, in the end, we decided to let that part of the programme go.
Incidentally, and this might help those of you reading this now to recognise the historical moment in time, it was during one afternoon of Kidzchurch visits when I first heard a news report on the car radio, and then, in one of the children’s homes, first saw the footage of the twin towers collapsing on 9/11.
I remember praying for the work at Cliff Park, both on my own and very much with others. I remember the sense of God’s leading and enabling and care for us and for the community we were reaching out to. It was hard work, but work undertaken together, with a common vision. There were tensions between us at times, and some difficult pastoral issues. I remember that time with gratitude to God, and gratitude towards the people with whom we made that journey, for that time.