St Andrew's Church Family Away Day

On Saturday 17th June St Andrew’s set off for Bolton Road Methodist Church in Bury for a Church Family Away Day, which was the vision of (and organised by) the Thursday Cell Group.

Throughout the day nearly 90 adults and children participated in a huge variety of activities around the theme of Creating Community; one of the five values underlying Cell Church.

A time of lively worship and emotional readings started the day in style; followed by a hilarious drama based on the ‘Weakest Link’. Who played Anne Robinson? - that would be telling but I will say that the casting was inspired!!

While the children and young people went to their own activities we enjoyed a thought provoking talk and discussion on the theme of the day by John Applegate, Archdeacon of Bolton.

A faith lunch was followed by hugely informative presentations by two of our Mission Partners: Irvin Morris (Mission Aviation Fellowship) and Peter Green (Barnabus).

Adults and children joined together to learn some great new songs, following which we had the opportunity to take a workshop in either Dance, Signing or Creative Writing. For me the Signing Workshop was the highlight of the day, so much so that I am now undertaking a course to learn more.

On completion of the Workshops we came back together for a ‘Show and Tell’, where each Workshop group and the children’s and youth groups demonstrated what they had learnt. By the end of songs, drama, 2 signed hymns, poems and a dance to ‘Servant King’ there were quite a few tears in eyes – a very moving experience.

The evening meal was delicious; we needed the energy as next on the agenda was a time of fun and games! My team didn’t win...

We closed the day with more lively worship but (despite it now being 11 hours since I had arrived!) I didn’t want the day to end.

So what was the reaction of the folk who came? Here is a small selection of the comments received:

"Fantastic, the Spirit was absolutely with us."

"I worried it might go a bit ‘flat’ - it didn't, it just got better as the day went on."

"Through the afternoon workshops we saw new ways to worship and praise the Lord, and great encouragement to people who thought they couldn't do such things, it was inspiring."

"I was very encouraged by the response to the new songs workshop - people certainly seemed to enjoy it and picked up the new songs very well."

"I was particularly moved by the Dance and the Signing, I found it a really, really effective style of worship, I enjoyed it so much."

"It was wonderful to see so many families enjoying the fellowship at a superb venue."

"Surely the Away Day should be considered as an Annual Event for our future Church Calendar and perhaps in a couple of years, or even sooner, being expanded into a Team Ministry Event??"

"The organization and provision of food was at an excellent standard."

"I felt it was a great day which was successful in creating community - I do feel closer to the church family."

And my personal favorite: "It was like a mini Spring Harvest, it was THAT GOOD!!"

The overall reaction: "Please may we have more!"

Karen Bracegirdle

The photos shown here are just a small selection of those taken during the day. A photo gallery containing many more photos will be available soon, please keep coming back to the site to see them!