Brentwood Schools Christian Worker Trust
Newsletter, Autumn Term 2016
Registered Charity No:
1005207
BSCWT, c/o Shenfield High School, Alexander Lane, Shenfield, Brentwood, Essex, CM15 8RY
Phone: 01277 249275 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.bscwt.org
“Christians serving schools”
Resting and growing
In August, I returned from a three-month sabbatical,
feeling refreshed and excited about what God is doing
through the work of BSCWT. I am so very grateful to our
Trustees for encouraging me to take this time of rest, to
our staff team and volunteers who made it possible for
the schools work to continue uninterrupted, and for everyone
who supported the sabbatical financially and in prayer.
During those three months, I had the
opportunity, amongst other things, to visit
some other Christian workers serving schools
in other towns and was encouraged by the
immense variety of what God is doing in
these other places. This also caused me to
reflect, with gratitude to God, on the wide
scope of the opportunities we have here in
Brentwood to serve our local schools as
Christians. And it seems clear that those
opportunities are continuing to grow. The
need for Christian learning and support
among young people and children is getting greater, not smaller. We firmly
believe that, because of this, the work of the local church, through BSCWT,
in serving local school communities, also needs to grow and develop.
So thank you so much for your support, in whatever form it may take. I
hope you enjoy catching up with some of our latest news in this newsletter
and I hope it will encourage you to keep standing with us.
Ian Kemble, Director of Schools Work
2017 Diary Considering doing something
different? How about becoming a
Dates
BSCWT Trustee?
From the
Trustees….
I was sorry not to be
able to attend the
25th
Annual
Celebration and General Meeting in
September. It is always good to look
back on what has been achieved in
the past year and then look forward to
what we hope will happen in the year
ahead.
We believe that now is the moment to
be looking to expand the activities of
the Trust, because there are so many
opportunities in local schools and we
have received initial donations
allowing us to consider expansion.
As Trustees we believe we should be
looking to increase our paid Team
and to continue to increase our
superb group of Associate Workers to
help meet the needs within our
community of schools.
This is not to just do more of the
same, but to do things that we haven’t
had the opportunity to do before. To
do this we need your help.
Could you give some time regularly to
help with activities in schools?
Getting alongside children with fun
activities? Being that person they can
talk to? Those currently involved tell
me how much they enjoy themselves!
 5th February
We are very grateful to Phil Manterfield for the years of
2017: Schools
service he has given to BSCWT as a Trustee. Now that Could you help with a regular gift to
Sunday
Phil has stepped down from this role, we have two help cover the cost of our increased
 7-21st May
vacancies and are currently looking for new Trustees to activities? You will be investing in the
future
of
our
2017: Pray for join the team. Please consider if this is something you
children.
Schools
are able to do. BSCWT has been serving the schools of
Fortnight
the Brentwood Borough for 25
Please contact our
years. It is exciting work to be
Administrator, Fiona,
 Annual
involved in!
at the BSCWT office
Celebration &
Please contact the BSCWT
for more information.
General
office if you would like more
Meeting: July
Jeff Fair
information and we will arrange
2017 (date to
Chair of Trustees
for one of the current Trustees
be confirmed)
to contact you.
Inside this issue:
Resting and Growing
From the Trustees
2017 Diary Dates
Considering doing something different?
‘QUOSH’
New! Chaplains at Grove House
Just Listen
Page
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
Secondary School Assemblies
Christmas is coming!
Diary of a Disciple
Finance Update
Associate Worker Focus
Schools Sunday
Feedback received / Becoming involved?
Page
2
3
3
3
4
4
4
Quosh
Quosh stands for ‘Questioning and understanding of self-harm’. This is
a course written especially for students who are already self-harming
through cutting. Over the past few years I have run this course with
several groups of school pupils and am currently running one with a
group of 6 students.
The ‘Health Behaviour in School-Aged
Children’ (HBSC) report, published in autumn 2014, revealed that over 1 in 5 of the 15 year-olds
surveyed have self-harmed. There is a very great need to support and help schools in these relevant issues.
The Quosh group focuses on the emotions behind the need to self-harm, and allows students to explore and
understand why they feel as they do. We look at choices and control, all done in a safe environment. It equips the
students to find healthier coping strategies as well as ways of coping better with the often difficult life issues they find
themselves in. Much prayer is needed for this course as we are working with very vulnerable lives. As Christians
we must keep ourselves relevant to issues facing young people today, and this course is one way we can do this.
Mary Thomas, Secondary Schools Worker
Grove House School
Chaplains
Listening Training
We were approached in the summer by Grove
House School, a local Brentwood school that
supports young people with speech, language and
communication needs. The school was asking if
we were able to support some students pastorally.
Feeling this was something that would be right for
us to do, we found two of our associate workers
willing to get involved and Sue our Primary Schools
Worker also joined the team. We offered the school
these three people as chaplains, each to work with
one student, possibly long term. The chaplains
have now been working with these students since
July and have had the opportunity to meet the
parents of the students also. In addition, Sue is
leading regular assemblies in the school, which are
well received with lots of student participation.
How do you feel when someone puts aside
time to listen to you properly focusing their
whole attention on you?
This was one of the central questions we
considered at our first Listening Training event
held in September. Using materials from the
Acorn
Healing
Trust
(www.acornchristian.org),
we
welcomed 12 people to our
morning of Listening, including
some newcomers to the Trust.
We thought about tuning in to
God, what kind of listeners we
are, how listening to someone
can start a process of healing in
their lives, and how we can go
on to be better listeners.
The feedback from those at the
event was very encouraging,
Mary Thomas, Secondary Schools Worker especially comments about the
power of the listening exercises
we undertook, and has inspired
us to put on more training
From Justin Bieber to the
events in the future. Watch this
Good Samaritan
space!
Sue Evans, Primary Schools Worker
Picture the scene: it’s 8.30am on a cold Monday
morning, 200 teenagers are sitting quietly in neat
rows in a large secondary school hall. They’re waiting for me
to speak! What would you say?!
We have the amazing privilege of speaking in assemblies at
several of our local secondary schools – approximately 40
assemblies a year in recent years – to try to help students
develop spiritually.
The first challenge is to be interesting and engaging! That’s
not easy at 8.30am in the morning, but I heard an RE advisor
once say that “there is no route from the boring to the
spiritual”. So in recent assemblies, we’ve tried to take
students on journeys from Justin Bieber to the parable of the
good Samaritan, from selfies to the Old Testament prophet Samuel,
from an ox tongue to sacrificial love, and from Ant and Dec to Easter.
Thankfully, the feedback we get from these assemblies is encouraging.
A student recently told us that our assemblies “set me up for the day”
and a member of staff recently said, after an assembly we led: “I’ve
heard a lot of assemblies, but that was amazing!”.
What a privilege to have opportunities like this!
Ian Kemble, Director of Schools Work
Christmas is a coming!
In the run up to Christmas, we have a wealth of opportunities to
support schools in teaching and exploring the Christmas stories:
Christmas Lessons in Shenfield School with the year 7’s
Christmas Unwrapped, our workshop lesson for year 5’s & 6’s is
linking more schools and churches than ever
From Darkness into Light, our interactive lesson for year 2’s, is
expanding to 2 more schools
Running a Christmas Prayer Space for the first time
Sending a new book (“Diary of a Disciple: Luke’s Story”, published
by Scripture Union—see below) as a Christmas present to many of
the junior and primary schools in Brentwood
Giving a Christmas message at Brentwood County High School’s
Carol Concert and end-of-term assemblies
Our Primary Clubs will be exploring the Christmas Story and giving
our members a present of a booklet telling the story.
Diary of a Disciple
Scripture Union have just published a great version of Luke’s Gospel, written in diary
format, with an engaging story-telling humour, and they have suggested that churches
buy the book as a gift for their local school to have in their library. As we approach
Christmas, we think it is a wonderful opportunity for us to bless the schools in Brentwood
by sending them a copy as a Christmas gift! We are also hoping to deliver some by hand
in each of the school assemblies we take, suggesting that maybe they’d like to read the
story for themselves by borrowing the book from their school library.
If you would like to sponsor one of these books please let us know – we are buying 30
copies at a discounted cost of £5 each. For more information about the book, visit the
Scripture Union shop at http://www.scriptureunion.org.uk/Shop
Sue Evans, Primary Schools Worker
Finance Update from The Treasurers & Trustees
(1st Quarter 1 April 2016 to 30 September 2016)
Peter Embling
Treasurer
Joe Nunn
Treasurer
Cathy Simmons decided it was time for her to step down from her role as Treasurer.
We are very appreciative of her care and dedication and are pleased to report that
there are two replacements to cover the Treasurer role, Joe Nunn and Peter
Embling.
So far this year our total income has been £39,873 which is below the budget of
£45,752. However we have only spent £31,042 against the budget of £39,868. The
sources of income and areas of expenditure are shown on the pie charts. This gives
a surplus of £8,831. We continue to rely on the generosity of our individual and
church donors. A big thank you to all who donate.
Income (unaudited):
(1st April 2016 to 30 Sept 2016)
Expenditure (unaudited):
*This year’s rates and insurance premiums have not been paid in this period.
Schools Sunday
Sunday 5th February 2017 will be “Schools
Sunday”. This is a new local initiative to
build on the long tradition of celebrating
Education Sunday in church services
around this time of year (Education Sunday
itself has now moved to the start of the
school year in September). We will be
producing resources for local churches to
help them to pray for and support local
schools and the work of BSCWT. Please
use this opportunity to support BSCWT and
the schools local to your church.
Feedback received from
BSCWT’s 2016 ‘It’s Your
Move’ project with Year 6 in
Primary Schools
“Thank you once again for an excellent
presentation, the children gain so much
from these sessions and they are always
enjoyed by all”.
“Very interactive and practical. All of the
children learnt important lessons and we
had fun, thank you”.
“Just thank you for coming in each year
and giving the children an opportunity to
consider and share their thoughts about
moving up to secondary school”.
In my role as an Associate Worker for BSCWT I
am involved with both primary and secondary
schools work.
In primary schools I help Sue and her team with
assemblies, clubs and projects. It is a privilege
to witness these children absorbing and understanding God’s love.
In secondary schools, the students
that I work with are referred to me by
school staff when it is felt they would
benefit from speaking to someone - a
‘mentor’. We spend time talking
about school and life which allows
them space to express themselves.
In turn, I hope to be able to support
them through what can sometimes be
a difficult time in each of our lives secondary school! This isn’t without
challenge - it can be difficult to find the right thing to say and sometimes there isn’t anything that can be said. Also, I am not able to pray
with the students unless they ask me to and therefore can feel as if the
time spent talking has been left open. I find it is really important to
pray before and after and to behave as a role model as well as a
mentor.
I am excited to see a change in the young people of Brentwood,
whether it be the youngsters learning about God or the older teenagers receiving the support they need as they approach adulthood.
I think that this is exactly where prayer is needed and that the young
people who are struggling can receive the support that they need!
How can you be involved?
PRAY
GIVE
We believe praying for
our local schools, children and
young people is really important. If
you do too, you can...
BSCWT
depends
upon
the
continued generosity of people who
support us financially. If you’d like to
be one of those people, you can...
 Request our weekly prayer email,
termly prayer calendar and
newsletter by sending an email to
[email protected]
 Set up a standing order or send a
one-off donation through your
online banking—please tell us and
ask for a Gift Aid Declaration form,
if applicable (or download one from
www.bscwt.org/downloads)
 Ask us to send you our termly
prayer calendar by post
 Join us for our team prayer
meetings at the BSCWT office
every
Friday,
9.30-10.30am,
during school term time
 Start a prayer group for schools in
your church or start/join a prayer
group for a particular school
 Contact us for a standing order
mandate (or download one from
www.bscwt.org/downloads)
 Send a cheque to our office
address (see front of newsletter)
For on-line banking or standing
orders, please contact the BSCWT
office for our bank account details.
 Just pray—on your own or with
others!
BSCWT is a Local Mission Partner of
VOLUNTEER
There are over 40 people who give
their time and energy to volunteer
with BSCWT...
 Our associate workers volunteer
with us in schools, working with
children and young people
 Our
management
committee
supports the schools work and the
trustees by doing important tasks in
areas
such
as
prayer,
finance, human resources, policywriting, monitoring and publicity
 Our ‘church reps’ help us to liaise
with people in many local
churches
 We are also open to applications
from people interested in doing an
‘internship’ with us for a year
If you are a Christian with a passion
for schools, education, children and
young people, and think you might
be interested in volunteering in any
of these capacities, please get in
touch with us at our office (see front
of newsletter).