Journey Through the Bible Calendar 2021-2022

This year our Family Calendar is using the Lord's Prayer as a framework.

Every week there is space for your family to plan the next week, read and think about a Bible story, and do a simple activity and prayer. For each theme from the Lord's Prayer we will explore different bits of the Bible to help us understand more.

A story from the Old Testament (OT)

A story from the New Testament (NT)

A song or poem from the Psalms (Ps)

A story Jesus told (JS)

We will also be looking at real-life examples of how Christians have lived out their faith over the years (CE)

The Diocese is providing churches with 10 free calendars to give away to families in their parishes. More can be purchased at a subsidised rate. The Lord's Prayer poster below is also available to print. Please contact Carolyn Edwards to order

Themes:

  • Love
  • Justice
  • Service and charity
  • Courage, trust and faith
  • Mercy and forgiveness
  • Truth and wisdom
  • Peace and hope

Ideas for using the calendar to engage with families

Below are some ideas for how churches can use the content of the calendar to build contact with children and their families, particularly when we are unable to gather as we would like to.

  • Print stickers with the dates of your special family friendly services or links to online content and give them out with the calendars for families to stick on the correct days. Avery do a bespoke service where they will print stickers of different sizes.
  • Encourage families to share their ‘wonderings’ on your facebook page or produce a short video of three things they talked about to share on the church website.
  • Create a Bible Timeline for the church wall that people can add to as you journey through the Bible together this year. Mark up a long piece of paper with the different dates and themes and then encourage everyone to draw pictures, write comments, etc. as the year progresses
  • Talk to your local school about how you can support them in delivering the Collective worships.
  • Make short films of members of the congregation talking about why the Bible is important to them and/or what their favourite Bible story is to be used as part of services or online content.
  • Host an ‘ask the vicar’ event. This could be done on Zoom, or at a socially distanced gathering. You could send out stamped addressed postcards beforehand and ask families to send in their difficult questions about the Bible stories they have read.
  • Video an engaging reading or drama of the Bible story for each week and put them on your website (make sure you have the publishers permission if you are using printed story books).
  • If you are doing children’s and youth activities then use the weekly Bible stories as your curriculum for the year. There are sessions for most of the stories in our Diocesan Youth Curriculum.
  • Run the Bible course by the Bible Society https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/the-bible-course/ for adults to support family Bible exploration.
  • Hold a Christmas card design competition – the winning card can then be delivered to families with details of Christmas services and activities
  • Get involved in the Children of Light Festival.