It wasn’t until speaking with my mum this week that I realised how incredible of a thing our Christmas outreach was. I mean, I knew it was amazing that we had a real Baby Jesus. And I knew that the transformation of our old church building into Israel in 1 AD was surprising. But what I had forgotten is how rare it is to be able to teach school children about Jesus.
You see, there is no separation of church and state in England, and all children are required to learn Religious Education, or RE. So for the whole of the past week, they’ve come to our church, put on robes and tunics, and lived the Christmas story for themselves.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This past week, we partnered with our church and the local charity that goes into schools to teach them about Jesus, and we put on the Christmas journey. I wrote the script with my friend Anna, and our outreach worker at church, Louis, worked alongside several others to source the materials needed to turn our old church building into five different scenes from Israel in 1 AD. The story was told from Mary’s perspective, and we used my friend Vanessa’s baby, Tilly, to be Baby Jesus. And over the course of a week, we welcomed in over 100 people from the community and over 400 year 3 & 4s (7-9 year olds) into the story of Jesus. The best bit was being able to be blatantly evangelistic and say to them things like, “Jesus was all of God, but in a human body. Jesus came to be with all of us. How amazing that the Messiah we’ve been waiting for came to be with us all.” And because we were in a stable with a real baby, the story became real for them.
It was hard work to do this every day for a week! But it was worth it to hear these rowdy classes go silent when they entered the stable and the presence of Jesus. Some of the adults even cried when they saw Baby Jesus. One man said, “Everything up to that point was fake, but Jesus was real.” It impacted him so much that he was deeply moved. It was important to me that the children and adults alike should all be able to touch and interact with Jesus, because we are all so good at putting Jesus out of our daily lives. But Jesus came for all of us! And luckily for me, Tilly is very sociable, so she enjoyed meeting everyone as well! I do have to say, for a three month old, she was a dream.
We still have a few more Christmas outreach bits this year for our local community, but doing the Christmas Journey helped me to think about how amazing it is that the Messiah, the chosen king that was long awaited, came as a wee baby. The king didn’t live in a palace. He came to a working class family, to be with people as one of them. And Jesus is still that person who is close to us today. How amazing.
Here are some pictures and a video so that you can experience a taste of the Christmas journey for yourself!
