Category Archives: Blog Posts

Hello 2023!

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Happy New Year! Can you believe we are in 2023?! Although the weather may be a bit miserable, we’re very happy because we have a wonderful new team member! Alex Contreras joins us with a background in teaching and youth work. She is very involved in the Catholic churches and has three children. We’re so pleased Alex has joined our team and she’s already getting stuck in with our lunch clubs and assembly planning! Thank you for all your support and prayers in our search, we knew God had it all in hand!

Our wonderful volunteers are also getting stuck in this term with six OT Mini courses being taught a week in four schools! Sarah-Jane and Eleanor are leading La Houguette, Frances and Sarah-Jane are at Melrose, Nigel, Bryan and Frances are at Beechwood and Lisa and Sarah are about to start at Castel. We’re so pleased to be able to cover so many schools – we couldn’t do it without them!

We’ll hand you over to Eleanor now for a message about SWYM.

Last time on the blog, I shared that SWYM’s vision and passion is that every child and young person in the South West (and now, in Guernsey!) would encounter Jesus, know him and make a choice to live for more. What is this going to look like in practice in Guernsey?

SWYM’s main strategy is to place trainee children and youth workers with churches, local ministries and schools work projects. We hope to have a cluster of SWYM trainees in Guernsey from September 2023. They would be placed in a local church and hopefully also work closely with PACE so they can get experience in schools.

Trainees will have a great support network on island, including their line manager, mentor, and support from their peers and the area co-ordinator at a weekly cluster meeting. They will also go to SWYM conference in north Devon six times a year to meet with all the other trainees and have training together.

I’d love a bit of help from you all, as PACE supporters based in churches across the island. We are looking for people who would like to train with SWYM.

Do you know anyone with a heart for children and young people who would love to train as a youth and children’s worker? The initial commitment is for a year on the ‘Be Transformed’ year but there are then opportunities to progress, including to degree level. Many trainees, but definitely not all are in the 18-25 age bracket. A potential trainee could be also someone who would like to retrain, or someone who has recently retired and is ready for a different challenge.

Please, have a think and pray and if anyone comes to mind, have a chat with them and suggest they get in touch with me. I’d love to hear from them. eleanor@swym.org.uk

PACE UPDATE!

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We’re now into December and that means Christmas Lessons!! We have started this years run of Christmas in a Box lessons this week! So far we have been into Hautes Capelles and La Mare. Over the next few weeks we will be delivering this lesson to about 265 Year 3 children across Guernsey!

We have also been busy delivering lessons in secondary schools! Lisa and Howard Davenport (Eldad Elim) have been teaching sessions on ‘A Christian World View’ looking at the fundamentals of what makes someone a Christian at La Mare with Year 7. The students have been asking some great questions like ‘How do we know God exists?’ and ‘What happens when we die?’. We have enjoyed teaching these sessions and are looking forward to our last one next week!  At Blanchelande Lisa and Tom Saddington (Catholic Church) have been leading lessons on the ‘Christian views on Creation’ focusing on the question ‘Are Science and the Bible compatible?’. Again these sessions lead to some very interesting discussions.

Finally we have our next message from Eleanor about SWYM!

In the last blog, I mentioned that we are very excited about a new partnership between PACE and SWYM (South West Youth Ministries).

SWYM’s vision and passion is that every child and young person in the South West (and now obviously, in Guernsey!) would encounter Jesus, know him and make a choice to live for more.

That means reaching out to children and young people in all their diversity, whatever that looks like; for example, ethnic diversity, different socio-economic backgrounds, children and young people who have additional needs. My family has moved around quite a bit and so I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in a variety of churches in the UK, NZ and now in Guernsey. I’ve observed that welcoming ALL children and young people can throw up challenges for churches and there have often been times when I would have loved more help and support in this area.  

It’s fantastic that SWYM have the opportunity to partner with PACE in Guernsey because what PACE is already doing is completely aligned with SWYM’s vision. For over 30 years PACE has worked in Guernsey schools. Lisa and Sarah and the volunteer team do such an amazing job and they aim to reach every child in every school, every year.

Back soon to tell you more about what the partnership will look like in practice.

Love Eleanor  

PACE Update

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We’re very excited to have started two new OT Mini courses at La Mare Primary with Lisa and Bryan Pill making their debut and at Notre Dame with Tom Saddington, Frances Ogier and Sarah. It’s great to be able to start new partnerships within our presenter team and be able to continue with what Phil started. Next week Sarah and Eleanor White will also be starting a course at St Mary and St Michael too.

We are also just starting this half term’s primary school assembly. We have chosen the theme “Heroes” and look at how we can be everyday heroes. We use the story of Gideon and discover how he was a hero, not by his own strength but by God’s. Even though he wasn’t sure, he followed God’s instructions and went on to be a hero! We encourage the children that even though we don’t have the tech of Iron Man or the strength of the Incredible HULK, we can still be a hero everyday:

  • By developing your character so that you’re helpful and respectful in the things you think, do and say.
  • By overcoming challenges and not giving up when things look too difficult or too hard.
  • By being enthusiastic in trying to be the best person you can be.

At the beginning of the week, Lisa was joined by Howard Davenport (Eldad Elim) to lead an assembly to the Year 7s at La Mare High. The assembly is one we’ve done before looking at not letting the past dictate your future. This includes the popular toothpaste challenge where two students have to draw one for our presenters. They are they challenged to put they toothpaste back into the tube – which they can’t do! Who do you think they drew? And whose drawing was better?

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Summer Newsletter 2022!

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We’ve had a fantastic term with many opportunities to explore faith with the children and students of Guernsey. However we are sad to see the departure of two very valued members of our PACE family, Phil and Victoria. We hope you join with us in thanking God for them and asking for his peace and guidance in their future endeavours. PACE are looking for a new team member so please keep this in your prayers too.

Here is a link to our latest video which outlines what we have been doing during 2021/2022. We played this at our AGM as a summary of our work.

We hope you enjoy reading our newsletter below!

Have a great summer!

PACE Newsletter Summer 2022Download

PACE Update

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We hope you all had a lovely Easter. We can’t quite believe we are into our final term of 2022 already! Time flies when you’re busy!

We started the term with the training of 3 new presenters for OT Mini. Our own Lisa, Tom Saddington and Bryan Pill all trained up over 3 days led by Phil. They’ve already started putting it into practise at Blanchelande leading alongside Phil and Nigel. We’re so excited to see our team grow and be able to deliver more courses throughout Guernsey. Phil and Frances have also started a new course at Amherst this week.

Big news this week with our first ever lessons taught at Elizabeth College – exploring a ‘Christian Worldview’ with Year 10 GCSE groups. We covered some of the big themes at the heart of the Christian faith, particularly focussing on Jesus life, death and resurrection! We’re so pleased to have been invited to teach these lessons and are looking forward to going back again. 

Our lunch clubs are back too, BOLT clubs will finish their courses from last term after having to be put on hold due to COVID cases. It’s great to welcome the children back to the group and enjoy playing games together! In secondary schools, our regular groups have returned and again we are pleased to see them.

Our AGM date has had to be changed and so will now be Tuesday 5th July at Delancey Elim Church 7-9pm. Please make a note of this date change. We will be discussing important changes for the future of PACE so hope to see you there!

 

PACE Spring Newsletter!

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Here is our end of term newsletter, we hope you enjoy reading about what we have been up to over the past few months. 

Please note that PACE’s AGM will be taking place on Monday 20th June and we would really encourage you to come along. We will be discussing the future of PACE’s work and what the team will look like come September 2022. We hope that you will stand with us in prayer as we seek God’s vision for the future of this amazing work.

Click on this link below to see the newsletter!

PACE Newsletter Spring 2022

Have a lovely Easter!

The PACE team 🙂

Easter in a Box!

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With some of our work put on hold due to the restrictions we are focusing on our launch of Easter in a Box: The Movie. 

Last week the team held a training evening for our volunteers and introduced them to the lesson. Very similar to Christmas in a Box, this lesson uses 6 boxes to go through the Easter story. The twist to this is it’s in the style of a movie! Each box is a scene and introduces the characters as the cast, the props to set the scene and a clapperboard to start and end the scene. 

We decided to launch this in three schools this year and see how they run before launching it in other schools in 2023. We will be bringing this to Blanchelande, St Mary and St Michaels and Notre Dame over the next few days. 

Thank you to Bristol Schools Connection for this amazing resource and making it available for all to use! 

 

PACE Update

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Over the last 2 weeks we have delivered a number of lessons on the ‘Christian views on Creation’ at La Mare High School and Blanchelande College. We explore Genesis 1 by watching the Creation video that Victoria made, this can be watched here. The students then have an opportunity to ask questions and we discuss ‘Is there anything that could be left out of the story?’ ‘Do you think the story is in the right order?’ and ‘What do you think about God being a creator?’ These lead to some very interesting discussions with debates often breaking out about do we really need the birds and the fish!!! We conclude the lesson by looking at stewardship and the value that God places on humanity as the pinnacle of his creation with a special role to play in the world. 
 
Last week concluded our time at Le Murier school working with Year 9 on their module for their ASDAN qualification. The students have worked really hard to put together an assembly on Jonah, which included acting out the story and then sharing how we all make mistakes sometimes but we can all have a second chance. One students who uses a speech tablet called Phil over before the performance of the assembly began to share a message with him that read ‘I am so excited!’ It was really great to see the students engage so well with the story and give an amazing presentation to the other students. 
 
We have also just started our current primary assembly. Before the restrictions started we took this to Vauvert, Melrose, Forest and Blanchelande. The assembly focuses on Peter’s denial and using some acting for the storytelling, we look at how Peter made a mistake but he learnt from it and Jesus forgave him. He went on to do great things, despite messing up! We encourage the children to be brave and learn from their mistakes.
 
 
Unfortunately a lot of our planned work including assemblies and lunch clubs have been put on hold for the time being. We encourage you to pray for the situation in the island and for the schools. We’re sad that we might not be able to visit as many schools over the next few weeks but hope that with changes we can still continue delivering some lessons.
 
 
 

PACE Update

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Phil and Lisa led an assembly at Ladies College on the theme ‘Respect for life’. They reflected on events that have happened over the last few years where little respect had been shown as well as giving students the opportunity to pause and reflect and think about the terrible events happening in Ukraine right now. Drawing on the teaching of Jesus about ‘loving your neighbour as you love yourself’ (Matthew 22:39) they encouraged the students to think about the importance of being kind to others. They explained that Jesus went a step further to say ‘love your enemies’ (Matthew 5:44) yes, love those people who you might struggle with or find annoying and challenged the students to think about building bridges with people who they don’t see eye to eye with. The assembly was well received by the schools with teachers offering praise for the message they had given. 
 
The team have also been busy delivering lessons at Blanchelande College on ‘The Problem of Evil and Suffering’ to Year 7 students. The lesson explores ‘the different types of evil in the world’ and asks the questions ‘Where does evil come from?’ and ‘What does the Bible have to say about how to respond to evil?’. We end the session by looking at some Christian charities and what they are doing to combat evil and suffering in our world. The students have engaged well with the lessons and asked some interesting questions. 
 
In the session we look at the importance of freewill and how God didn’t create robots. We do a quiz to see if they can name some famous robots from movies, look at the pictures below, how many robots can you name?
 
 

Behind the scenes the team are also working on a project – another virtual assembly! We thought it would be beneficial to have a backup assembly that can be sent out to primary schools if for some reason we are unable to visit. This one includes some of our loved puppets acting out the story of Esther. Victoria is working hard using her creative talents to put the video together. 

Finally the team went along to another Godly Play session held by Eleanor at St Peter’s Church. This time the story was Ruth and it was great to see another effective way to tell the story in a different, visual way. We are hoping to include this method more in our lessons in primary schools. 


PACE Update

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This week sees the final lessons of some of our OT Mini courses at Forest and La Houguette. Feedback has been great from both teachers and children, commenting on the amount learnt in a few weeks and the fun, engaging way the lessons were taught. We’re always sad to leave a class we’ve got to know and spent time with but very pleased to have completed another course! With each course we improve our delivery, knowledge and resources.

Lisa and Phil along with Tom Saddington led some deep lessons on War this week at Blanchlande Year 11s. Both groups engaged well and had some interesting discussions. The lessons looks into the Christian views on War and their responses. Included in the lesson is a look into the film Hacksaw Ridge and the true story of Desmond Doss as a conscientious objector. Very interesting!

In our secondary lunch clubs this term we are looking at Big Questions including:
        – Has Science disproved God?
        – Can we trust the Bible?
        – If there is a God why do people suffer?
        – There are so many religions which one do I choose?
We have used some interactive quizzes or fun light hearted activities to introduce these themes which then spark great conversations with the students. Below are some mind maps that have been produced in the discussions.