The Church of Ireland Diocese of Connor

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Great response to Connor’s online Holiday Bible Club

Friday August 14th 2020

Jill Hamilton, Connor Children’s Project Officer.

Children across the diocese have just about got their breath back after the fun and activity of last week’s Cabin Fever online Holiday Bible Club.

A big thank you to everyone who helped make this diocesan event such a success.

Connor Children’s Project Development Officer Jill Hamilton writes:

I was really thrilled with how the online Holiday Bible Club turned out and I think its big strength was that so many churches in the diocese were willing to get involved by sending in videos to be part of the online programme.

We had rectors, curates, and children’s workers dressing up as professors and silly scientists, taking part in dramas and demonstrating experiments. We had lots of our children’s leaders in parishes across the diocese filming fantastic videos of prayer activities, experiments, games, and arts and crafts.

Most exciting of all, we had our children taking part and showing how incredibly talented and capable they are and how willing they are to jump in and get involved. The children and their families demoed art activities, experiments, memory verse challenges, games, prayer activities and shared their thoughts in the ‘question of the day.’

One of the most memorable parts of each day’s programme were the puppet sketches with ‘Noah,’ ‘Mrs Noah’ and ‘the camels’ as the main characters. Enormous thanks to Karen Webb who leads our diocesan Centre of Mission for writing and performing the scripts along with her daughter Caroline. Caroline is a talented actor who currently works with Riverside Performing Arts in Birmingham and was back home in Northern Ireland during lockdown. So we were very fortunate and blessed to have her as part of the team!

As you will see from the comments below, the children loved the puppet sketches!

A special thanks to the ‘key’ people in the parishes who took on the organisation of Cabin Fever at local level and contacted leaders and families in the church asking them to be involved. It takes a lot of work and effort behind the scenes to make it all happen so successfully.

Cabin Fever was premiered from August 3-7 and we have had a great response to the online videos. They have been widely shared and promoted throughout Connor Diocese and many parishes have used it as their 2020 Holiday Bible Club.

Ripple Connor was also delighted to partner with two churches in Armagh Diocese who had enquired if they could use the material for their children and families. One of those churches – St Mark’s, Armagh, personalised the material by adding videos using their own leaders and staff team which was a brilliant effort and a great idea.

In Connor Diocese, some churches incorporated Zoom calls as part of their programme, which allowed them to connect with the children in their parish and introduce a ‘live’ interactive element to Cabin Fever. This blend of pre-recorded videos and live zoom calls worked particularly well.

The videos are still freely available on the Ripple Connor website and Facebook page.

Comments about Cabin Fever:

• Massive congrats on a very successful week! It’s been such fun to join you all each day. A lot of work went into those videos. You should be very proud ♥ Well done to everyone who took part this week. I really enjoyed it! Lynn – Children’s Worker (Glenavy)
• Can I just say a huge thank you for all your work in Cabin Fever!! We have loved it in our house, and it’s been a joy to do with the other churches. We had the kids on Zoom each morning and evening and it’s been great fun. We had about 20-22 kids on Zoom (even with the good weather!) So, thank you for giving us the resources to be able to do that. Donna -Children’s Worker (Lisburn Cathedral).
•  Well done on the holiday club!! Our kids loved it! Here’s some of their comments:
  ‘My favourite part of the holiday bible club was the puppets- Noah’s story.’
  My favourite part was the puppets telling the story of Noah’s ark’.
  ‘I loved the holiday bible club especially the puppets and the great balloon sacrifice.’
  ‘I loved seeing my cousin Madison and Uncle Neil ding science experiments for Holiday Bible Club.’
  We had 24 involved on daily zoom calls in between videos. For this Sunday’s kids church we are doing a holiday club taster video. Dianne – Children, Youth and Families Associate (United Parish)
• Congratulations to each and every one who has taken part in this programme all week 👏 👍 we really enjoyed watching and taking part 💖 Especially well done and congratulations to Jill for organising and putting this altogether. Katrina – parent (St Stephen’s).
• We loved it too, our daughter says it was so much fun and she can’t wait for more of Noah’s story. Carolyn – parent (Kilwaughter and Cairncastle).

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