Lots of people expect children to sit down and be quiet in church, but not here at St Lawrence. We know that it’s in the nature of children to make noise and to run about, so we have created a service that lets them be children. Family Praise is for 0-5’s and starts at 9:30 on a Sunday morning in the church building. This is a fantastic place for children to come along and find out about God at an early age and our hope is that they will carry on finding out more about God throughout their lives.

We are also aware that children of different ages learn in different ways and you can’t have 10 year olds in the same group as 4 year olds because either the 10 year olds are going to get bored or everything that you’re doing will go over the head of the 4 year olds. That is why we have NET:GEN, a group for 6-10’s at 9:15 in the church hall (on Vicarage Lane) where we carry on teaching God’s word and build on what the children have learnt at Family Praise.

But the children’s work is not separate from the rest of the church, we want the children and the adults to understand that the children are a part of St Lawrence as much as our adult members are; this is why we have Family Communion on the first Sunday of every month. We want to get the children as involved as possible, if that’s doing one of the readings or leading the prayers, if there is something that a child can do at this service we will find it and encourage them to do it.

These three activities are great to bring your children along to so that they can learn more about Jesus and the Bible.