As the Government and Church of England guidance now allows for some children and youth ministry to take place in church grounds, we have been considering different options that might be possible for us at All Saints.  There are still many restrictions in place and regulations we would have to follow but there are two options that we feel could be a good way forward.  Before making any decisions, we would like to ask your thoughts on which option we should begin with. 

The first option would be to hold a service for children at 4pm on a Sunday.  Parents or carers would have to stay with and be responsible for the children during the service.  For our young people we would have a youth service at 7.30pm on a Sunday night, parents or carers would not have to be in attendance.  Although we would make the services as child/youth friendly as we can, there are still restrictions in place so we could not have them moving around the church, singing etc.  Due to the social distancing regulations, not everyone would be able to come on the same Sunday so we would have a booking system in place, as we do now for the services being held on a Sunday morning.

The second option is that we could put the children/youth into bubbles and then the children/youth could come to the Halls and have a session there (Or outside when the weather permits it) whilst a service is happening for the adults in church on Sunday morning.  There would be one bubble for children and one for youth on each Sunday.  The bubbles could have up to 12 children in them but we could not have children under the age of 4 years old at this time.  Once in a bubble, the bubbles can’t be changed.  Siblings would be in the same bubbles for children’s bubbles and youth bubbles.  Due to the number of children we have at All Saints, it is likely that each bubble would only be able to come to groups once a month. 

We understand that neither of these options is ideal and mean that at the moment we can’t provide weekly provision in person but we would value your opinion as to which option would work better for you as a family, at least initially.  Please could you do this by indicating below?  With many thanks.