Hello from the Third Sunday Team! We are a small group of volunteers who help our Vicar, Rev. Phil, to run the all-age worship service on the third Sunday of each month at St John’s. We believe that it’s important that the congregation of St John’s should come together to worship together as one big family, to learn from one another and to grow in our Christian faith together. This means that we aim to put together a service that is accessible for the youngest members of the congregation but that contains depth to help the adults think too.
In May we were thinking about prayer and how important it is in our lives as Christians – we heard how praying to God sustained the disciples after they witnessed Jesus’ return to heaven, and we heard how Jesus himself, was sustained by prayer as he prepared to be arrested, tried, crucified and raised from the dead. We wanted the activities to give us special time to pray – to talk to God and bring whatever is on our hearts to Him in prayer. First, we all drew around our hands and spent a few moments thinking what we would like to pray for this morning, we then wrote this on our handprint. After the service, we added these to our prayer map of Hedge End in the Underhill Centre to show our prayers for the community and the world rising up.
The second activity was to make prayer spirals - we wrote our own special prayers on the spiral of paper, decorated them, and then added thread so that these could be hung up. As they twirled around, we encouraged the children to imagine their prayers rising up to God.
Our services often include drama, Lego animations or other activities (like playing frisbee, archery or painting, to name a few) to bring the Bible lesson to life and draw out the meaning for an all-age audience. If you haven’t joined us for a Third Sunday Service, we really hope you will come and worship with us soon. You are warmly invited and very much welcome!
Past Third Sunday Activities:
To give you an idea of what a Third Sunday Service is like, here are some pictures of some of our past activities.
Stones painted during the March 2023 service.
Angels made by folding paper into concertinas to remind us of the lesson that we can do the tasks that God has given to us because we have His strength.
Shake up jar to help us remember the kind of king Jesus was.
Prayer trail behind the church.
Prayer trail activity.
Easter cross in the church.
Hope Lanterns – to shine the light of hope into our streets and communities.
Springtime nature weaving – to think about the beautiful, diverse world that God has given to us, and to encourage us to think about our own God-given gifts and how we are all part of God’s creation – interdependent and intertwined.
Transformation pictures with kitchen roll and pens, to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.
Who could forget the gritty, Oscar-nominated* short film, retelling when Jesus Calmed the Storm. (*May not actually have been nominated for Oscars. I presume our paperwork got lost in the post, but with such talent amongst us, who can tell where the young starlets at St John’s will go next?)
The Parable of the workers in the Vineyard (click here to watch on YouTube).
Lego animation of David and Goliath (click here to watch on YouTube).
Christingle
Harvest @TheShed, (a space in the church carpark where the church sometimes holds outdoor services, or prayer trails).
Remembrance Day @the Shed