Hand-in-Hand Gold Awards celebrating excellence
We want to identify, recognise and share the stories of local churches all round the UK that have great children’s ministry or family ministry – stories that promote best practice, stories that will inspire other churches, stories of children coming to know and love Jesus, stories of community engagement, stories that will celebrate the commitment of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers and workers that are engaged in these vital areas of church ministry.
We are not looking for one winner, we want to acknowledge all churches that have a story to tell of how an aspect of their children’s ministry or family ministry is changing the lives of individuals or serving their community and are achieving basic levels of good practice. We are looking for stories from large and small churches; urban, suburban and rural communities; and all denominations and church traditions.
We want to use these awards to promote the importance of these areas of ministry to the church in general, demonstrating the vital and excellent work that is going on at the local church level all round the UK. We want to collect all these stories together on the web site – a place we can point church leaders, demonstrating to them the strength, depth and vital importance of children’s and family ministry.
Whetstone URC is the first church to apply for and receive an award and their story is a good example of what we are looking for. It is a small church with a congregation of mainly older folk. Four years ago they had no children. Read their story...
Churches receiving the awards may only have an inspirational story to share in one area. This could be:
• children’s ministry discipleship provision for the children belonging to the church
* age appropriate discipleship (Sunday school, children’s church, children’s cells etc)
* children’s worship (children’s music groups, new song writers, non-music worship)…
• children’s ministry evangelistic outreach to the community
* holiday clubs
* kids clubs (including uniformed organisations)…
• children’s ministry community service projects
* after school clubs
* children’s breakfast clubs
* sports clubs
* creative clubs (art, drama etc)
* children’s counselling services…
• church engagement with local schools
* assemblies
* curriculum support…
• family ministry all-age church
* all-age worship services
* a fresh expression of church that is attracting new families (eg Messy Church)
* children and/or family involvement in all-age worship (music, drama, puppetry etc)…
* inter-generational cell groups…
• family ministry support to church families
* Christian parenting courses
* encouraging and resourcing family Bible discovery and prayer times at home…
• family ministry community service projects
* toddler groups
* dads and children groups
* Christian pre-school or school
* parenting courses
* counselling services…
All churches will need to demonstrate that they have the necessary policies in place to ensure good practice across all their children’s and family ministries.
All churches receiving an award will have their stories told on this web site to inspire others. They will also be invited to the Children’s and Family Ministries Hand-in-Hand conference in February, with some invited to share their story on stage. Due to the generosity of the sponsoring organisations we will be able to provide some bursaries for travel, accommodation and conference tickets, enabling as many as possible of the churches receiving awards to attend the event.
Our aim is to make the awards an annual event, with stories being regularly updated on the web site.
TO APPLY FOR A HAND-IN-HAND GOLD AWARD YOUR CHURCH MUST BE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands or Isle of Man)
Step 1
Register your church to apply for an award.
You will be asked to answer some questions and write a short description of the children’s and family work in your church. You can do this on line, by email or by post.
We will then contact you either saying that you are still in line for an award or explaining why you won’t be receiving an award this time round.
Step 2
If you are still in line for an award, we will ask for some follow-up information from your church leader, from a couple of the people who you are serving in your ministry and from an outsider who can verify your application.
Sponsored by:
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