With the growing prevalence of County Lines in our communities across the diocese and the impact this is having on children and young people being exploited, we wanted to be able to offer training to our churches and communities.  In partnership with the Clewer Initiative and Mosaic Creative the diocese can offer training with a community approach to raising awareness and taking practical action against County Lines.  We cover understanding and detecting County Lines, protecting children young people and vulnerable adults, building community resilience and setting up and action group.  The training intertwines prayer and biblical reflection for those with faith to deepen our understanding of the issues.

For more information please email Sarah Wheat, Engagement Officer.

Visit the Modern Slavery page for more information. 

We’ve changed the shape of our All Age Service in St Peter’s, Holywell and Holy Trinity, Greenfield from a more traditional format to a celebration/party, which includes music, song, activities and a short talk. Food has encouraged people to come, and improving our advertising with printed ‘invites’ and a big splash on social media has seen numbers at this monthly service growing faster than we can catch up.

For further information please contact. DominicCawdell@cinw.org.uk

On the 30^th November we hide blessing bags around our village for people to find on the 1^st December. They contain a small handmade gift and a double sided business card. On one side is a prayer of blessing and on the other details of all our Christmas services. We have made angels, as they brought the message of Jesus birth and sheep, to represent the shepherds who heard the good news and went to search for Jesus.  Next year we will make baby Jesus. Each bag is clearly labelled that the finder may take it home.

Another church has adapted this idea to put the gift into a tiny hamper with a scone & cream, toiletries, gospel and give them to people who they know to be in need.

For more information please contact RebeccaSparey-Taylor@cinw.org.uk

Early in advent, before people get too busy, we put on a Light Up Nativity event. Using electric tea lights and battery powered Christmas lights we illuminate a number of scenes from the nativity, with a short sentence to describe what is happening. These are at ‘child height’ on tables made of knitted nativity characters so it doesn’t matter if children touch them. The church’s nativity set invites people to come on Christmas Eve to the Crib Service to help place the characters into the stable. This year we added in a big nativity scene where people could put their head through and have their photo taken, and telling the Christmas story around the fire.

For more information please contact

RebeccaSparey-Taylor@cinw.org.uk

The project aimed to connect with families in schools and the community and with the true meaning of Christmas in a fun and accessible way. The Jesus rock is a stone painted to look like a swaddled baby Jesus with a Christmas verse attached.

Rocks were painted by people from the church and hidden around the local community or, given to every family in a participating school. Some were also left in local shops.

We advertised on the Borderlands and on  community Facebook pages, participating churches local Facebook/Instagram pages- with instructions to take one stone home if you find one.

People were encouraged to design a manger for baby Jesus and to post pictures of it (not of any children) to school or church Facebook pages.

For more information please contact Gill Stanning GillStanning@churchinwales.org.uk

It all started with a donkey called ‘Daisy’ and an intention to involve as many people from the village as possible in the celebration of the nativity story together with Sunday Super Stars, the village Sunday School.

It came together as a full on procession with carols around the village with the children in costume telling the story, involving the pub and its landlord and completing the journey at a cattle shed complete with straw bales and a manger.

Daisy was beautifully behaved with about 40 adults and 25 children attending and mulled wine and warm mince pies enjoyed by all.

For more information please contact AnneHooper@cinw.org.uk

Something visual, bright, colourful, can be widely circulated, that we could fit cheerful illustrations, a Bible verse, our churches’ names and a way for people to easily access information on our services and website.

We incorporated a QR Code  https://www.qr-code-generator.com – Type in your webpage address and it will generate it for you to download. You need to size it on your materials no smaller than 2cm squared or it may not be scannable.

We thought that a beermat could also be given out in pubs and restaurants.

I used my own artwork, designed the text and layout on it, generated the QR code and ordered through https://beermats4u.uk/printed-beer-mats/

We linked the QR code to a webpage of Christmas services in Alyn, also including resources such as the Diocesan Advent calendar. In all, almost 7,500 were distributed.

For more information please contact Honor Parkinson alynmissionarea3@gmail.com

We ran this 4 week Lent Course over Zoom for the whole Mission Area. Each week starts with a 15minute video of a place in the Holy Land – Jericho, Bethany, the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem. This is followed by a bible study of events in Holy Week that occurred in each of these places, looking not just at the historical Jesus but what this means for our lives today. The course was written by Rev’d Dr Peter Walker who has led tours to the Holy Land for the past 30 years and a small group of clergy from across the UK. The course was both informative and engaging.

For more information contact rebeccasparey-taylor@cinw.org.uk

https://walkwaybooks.com/collections/courses/products/undiscovered-lent