Sandown

Don’t give up!

This is message for all those CE leaders struggling to attract new members. A few years ago we had only 7 young people in Sandown JCE, in Newry. We thought, “What shall we do”?

Galatians 6:9 “ tells us, “So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up”.

After another successful Holiday Bible Club, in June, we decided to try these 2 things:

1. Put a prayer request into the Church Prayer Group and Church announcements that more children would attend.

2. Sent a simple book mark size invite for each child and some posters into the local Primary schools to invite children to CE.

CE commenced in September as usual, in the first week we had a few new members, the next week it grew and grew and grew and now we have 35 on our books with an average attendance of 29 members.

As numbers increased we faced another challenge - did we have enough leaders and so we went back to the prayer team and asked for prayers that we would recruit more leaders.

God answered our prayers and we gained 3 new faithful leaders whose children attend the group Natasha, Catherine & Elizabeth. They often joke that they agreed to help on an infrequent basis but have ended up coming along every week.

We also have 3 teenagers Jane, Jake & Sarah who have grown up through CE and who now come along and help with crafts, music and the PowerPoint system for the story.

Our CE doesn’t have computer games so the children are encouraged for the first 45 minutes to play various board games, table tennis, football, Subbuteo or take part in the weekly craft. Then we have singing - their favourite song being, My Lighthouse by Rend Collective - the CE promise and our talk.

This year we are looking at different sports and the Bible for example darts (arrows), running, football, hockey etc.

I asked a few of the children what they enjoy about CE and here is what they told me:Eva, Emma, Nathan, Nikita, Faith, Kathryn, Jodie, Erin, Jessica - I see my friends. Leah - I like playing. Katie, Jake, Dylan, Dara, Sarah and Cara enjoy the football. Thomas likes the fuseball.

All the children enjoy saying the CE promise in different accents and there is great competition to see who can remember the memory verse.