Worship
At Moordown St John’s, we aim for balanced children who are spiritually self-aware and curious.
The Fruits of the Spirit include Love, Joy, Peace, Goodness, Kindness, Patience, Gentleness, Faithfulness and Self-control and guide our choices, our values and our behaviour as we engage with ourselves, others, the world around us and beyond.
Collective worship is a time when we acknowledge and reflect on God and his role in our lives and is an important part of each day at MSJ. Throughout the week, we have opportunities to worship as a whole school community, in Key Stages and in our classes. Each class has a reflective, interactive prayer and worship table and spirituality board.
Collective worship is planned systematically, so there is continuity, variety and clear focus on Christian beliefs and festivals. Anglican churches follow a liturgical calendar - this is a pattern for worship through the year. As a church school, we work in partnership with St John’s church leadership to plan our worship. Our worship also includes time for celebration and launching curriculum events.
Through our planning, we seek to offer a variety of experiences which enable the children to grow spiritually. Throughout their life at Moordown St John’s we encourage them to reflect on their experiences with increasing sensitivity. We promote questioning and explore the meaning of experience through which children develop understanding, personal views and insights. Children are encouraged to apply insights gained with increasing degrees of perception to their own lives in line with the school’s Anglican status and history. They begin to understand and know that belief is valuable and that the Christian belief is endorsed by the whole school community.
Our pattern of worship reflects a coaching model for worship sessions and deliberately mirrors the approach we use in Trick Box:
- Accept: introducing a theme or focus, exploring where children are at, accepting without judgement different views, and starting points. This phase of the worship may include music, a ‘welcome’ and special attention is given to the ‘atmosphere’
- Be: engage pupils in a story, focus, stimulus that challenges and questions; is there a sense of awe and wonder and is there conviction in the message?
- Choose: what does the story, focus, stimulus, question mean to you? to us? How will you/we respond and reflect on the message? What participation is there by pupils?
- Do: what will you do differently? Prayer, take away and apply to daily living.
Through our connection with Moordown St John’s Church and other churches and partnerships in the community, our worship and understanding is enhanced through regular visits from ministers and speakers.
We are also fortunate to have a ‘Peace Garden’ to engage and promote reflection by individual children and adults. Weather permitting, classes are encouraged to hold their class worship in the peace garden.
