Many readers will already know that Christ Church has a close relationship with Spinnaker, the Christian education charity. We provide financial support because it is one of our championed missions and our church building also hosts the annual Experience Easter Roadshow.
As well as providing high quality Christian education and activities, Spinnaker helps schools to fulfil key elements of the national curriculum. SMSC (Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural) education is covered as well as a focus on Well-being which is now included within Ofsted reporting and is an even more important priority now.
In ‘normal’ years the Epsom and Ewell Hub team members visit several local primary schools to provide lunch time sessions (Fish Clubs), assemblies, RE Days for each year group and the highlight of the year, the Experience Easter Roadshow. This welcomes Year 5 pupils (aged 9 -10) from additional schools ranging from Stoneleigh to Leatherhead, to local host churches to visit and participate in the events of Jerusalem during Holy Week.
In 2020 we were looking forward to an even larger programme involving over 1200 children and their teachers, including 3 new schools plus a new host church. This year we were also going to open Experience Easter to the public, as part of the Good Friday event in Epsom.
We were just 2 weeks into the Roadshow in early March when we knew we must cancel it and shortly afterwards life as we knew it ground to a halt … BUT… although we had had to curtail our programme, we felt as though we had been richly blessed. We had spent our first week at our new host church (St Mary’s Ewell) whose members were so very welcoming …. and each of our 3 new schools visited us in those two weeks.
During 2020 the central team has continued to make and distribute video assemblies to be shown in individual classrooms and the Epsom & Ewell Team have also kept contact, giving a gift to the staff of each school at the start of the academic year and providing recorded reflections and support with prayer times.
This is the feedback we received recently from one local school teacher:
“We have had a lot of very positive feedback over the last few weeks and staff expressing their gratitude for all the time the team are putting into producing the films. Thank you so much for all your love and support this term. You have made such an impact on pupils and staff.”
Thank you Christ Church members, for the support you give to Spinnaker and our other championed missions! You will hear more about each of them throughout the year.