Faith at Home
Faith at Home is a call to discover God’s presence in the place where people spend most of their time. It has certainly never been more pertinent in this time of national crisis and Lockdown. A church is fundamentally made up of multiple households, each a community of faith. The home is a place where all members of the household might share together in discovering, recognising, and following God who is always with us. Our role as leaders is to equip and inspire these regular habits and practices, placing children and young people at the centre.
Through prayer, conversation, debate, questions, reading, creating, pausing, and reflecting, our Lockdown bag offers in a symbolic way a tentative route into exploring faith and discovering spiritual encounter in our homes. It is a call to choose a lifelong exploration of a growing faith, nurtured in the normal everyday elements of life together building on our exiting living well programme.
Faith at Home is a national campaign that builds on the work of Growing Faith and Everyday Faith to support the faith development and pastoral care of children and young people. It seeks to provide:
· Experiences that inspire parents and families to grow in faith together in the ‘new daily normal’ of the home.
· Resources that equip children and young people to explore faith together and feel supported pastorally as part of school and church communities.
· Networks that connect school leaders, church leaders, chaplains to share great practise and build community together focused on the faith development of children and young people.
Why the home?
Home is both a place and feeling. It is where we eat, where we sleep, where we find ourselves at the start and end of our day. Home is where we can feel the strongest sense of belonging, where we can feel connected to ‘our people’, where we can feel part of ‘our tribe’. It can also be a place of doubt, questions, loneliness, and fear. While talking about being the vine, Jesus invites us to be at home in him, as he is at home in us (John 15:1-4 MSG). We are invited to imagine that we are sharing our everyday lives with each other and with God, intertwined by love as a community of growing faith.
There are many more online resources that we will be signposting throughout the year particularly as Guildford Diocese launches a Year of Children and Young People in the Autumn. For us at Christ Church developing sustainability for our Youth and families work is a priority of our Mission Action Plan so we wanted to get ahead of the game.
Rosemary Donovan & Jen Sadler