Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to this lesson on church in the local community.

I'm Miss Kendrick, and in this lesson, we are going to look at why Christians think it's important to work in their local community, what our local outreach might look like, and what some local charities might do as well.

You're going to need a pen or a pencil or a, and a different kind of pen or pencil so that you can make additions and corrections to your work, and you're going to need some paper to write down your answers.

Now, if you've been taking part in the lessons in this unit, you'll know that we've looked at many different ways in which Christians worship together and how the church is often a centre of public worship for many Christians.

And remember that we have a distinction between the Church and a church.

The Church with a capital C is the community of believers, whereas a church with a small C is a building in which Christians commonly worship.

Now, traditionally, Christians believe that having faith is not just about your personal relationship with God, but also about being part of the wider church community and making a positive impact on the world around you in your local community as well.

We're going to look at some motivation for this from the Bible, and then we're going to look at how Christians outreach in their local communities.

So, in the slide here, I've got three different Bible verses that are used to motivate Christians to help in their local communities.

Some of these we've seen before if you've done any of the other lessons with me.

Firstly we have, "I tell you, "whenever you did this for one of the least important "of these followers of mine, "you did it for me." Now, this quotation is from the story of the parable of the sheep and the goats, which Jesus told.

This parable is about judgement , and in it, Jesus gives examples of good things that some people did for others.

And he said, "Well, when you did those things, "it's like you did it for me." And those people were rewarded with Heaven while the people who didn't help others were rejected by God.

So, many Christians would say that it's really important that they help others because they believe they're going to be judged on their deeds.

That quotation in particular links to judgement.

The second one.

"So it is with faith: "if it is alone and includes no actions, "then it is dead." Now this is the idea that true faith expresses itself in deeds.

Many Christians would say that if someone were to say they were a Christian, but not live a Christian life, then they don't really have faith.

They're not really a follower of Jesus.

And so, they would say that doing good deeds is a natural expression of faith.

That links to our last quotation, actually, which says, "For God loved the world so much "that he gave his only son "so that everyone who believes in him may not die, "but have eternal life." Now, traditionally, Christians believe that everyone is valuable for two main reasons.

One, that they're made in the image of God, and that links to the creation story.

And two, because of the belief that Jesus died for all humanity, and that means that people have been bought at a great price.

Sometimes when you think about, I don't know, things like art, someone might say, "Well, it's worth as much as someone's "willing to pay for it," right? And, well, you can sort of see this idea with humanity in Christianity, that if humans are worth as much as someone's willing to pay, well, Christians believe that Jesus paid the ultimate price, that he gave his life for each and every human being.

So, that means that when it comes to their local community and people in their communities who may be needy, or just people who want to have positive relationships and things like that, they would say that they'll be motivated to help them and show them love because of the belief that God loves all people.

So, what you're going to do is you are going to write down the meanings of these quotations, and I've given you a bit of a buck of new information for each one, haven't I? Let me just do a quick recap.

So, the first one, which is from the parable of the sheep and the goats, links to the belief that many Christians have that they'll be judged on their actions.

The second one is the belief that true faith is expressed in actions.

And the third one is that many Christians believe that all people are valuable because Jesus died for them.

So, you're going to pause your video and see if you can explain the relevance of each of these quotations.

I hope you got those down okay.

Now's an opportunity to add anything to your answers that you were missing, so you can just pause the video now so you can do that.

Okay, now you've got all of those down.

Let's look at the next thing.

So, here I've got two examples of two very different types of church or two church buildings that might look very different.

On the far side, you've got a very traditional-looking church building.

In UK you can see a church like this in most towns or villages.

Nearer to me, we have a more modern model of church.

So, they could be in a church building like the one in the picture.

You can't quite tell, can you? But they could be in another building that's been converted into a church, like a warehouse or sometimes an old cinema, or any space that can be used for people to gather and worship together.

Now, the church building is really important because it's often a centre of activities.

So, what we're going to do is we're going to look at the sort of things that are going to happen in a church service.

Some of these ideas will be quite familiar to you if you've taken part in previous lessons.

And then we're going to think about what might happen in a church for the rest of the week.

So, in an average church service, and I'm saying average here because, as we know, lots of different denominations will do things in a different way.

But most church services will include these elements that I've got here.

There will often be sung worship and hymns.

There will be a sermon or a preach from the vicar or the minister, or maybe even someone visiting.

There will usually be prayers, whether these are formal prayers that have been written down and used for hundreds of years, or whether they are spontaneous prayers that people make up on the spot.

There may be a baptism or a confirmation.

That's where someone confirms the promises made on their part in a baptism service.

There might be communion or Eucharist, not necessarily every Sunday, but every Sunday for some Christians.

Peace, so, the peace is a part of the liturgical service where everybody shakes hands and says hello to each other and says, "May the peace of the Lord be with you." And one of the reasons I've put that on there, even though not all denominations will call it the peace, is lots of churches will have an opportunity for members of the congregation to greet one another and say hello to somebody new in the service.

There will usually be children's and youth groups.

Lots of churches, especially if they've got lots of children in their congregation, will have Sunday school and things like that.

And finally, I've got on there tea and coffee/a church lunch because a big part of community is spending time talking to each other and spending time together.

So, most churches will offer tea and coffee at the end of the service so that people can hang around and have a chat and get to know each other.

That is a really important part of the service, actually, especially for someone who's new and who's trying church for the first time.

That's their opportunity to start to meet some people.

But the question I've got here is, what happens during the rest of the week? That's just Sunday morning or perhaps Sunday evening, if their church does evening services as well.

But there's seven days in the week, and this is just one.

So, you're going to pause for a minute, and I want you to write down as much as you can think of that might happen in a church during the rest of the week.

I'm going to give you a clue here and write down toddler groups.

You might be aware of, I don't know, younger siblings, or you might even remember going to a church for a toddler group or preschool or something like that when you were little.

That's the first one I've got for you.

Think about other reasons why someone might go to a church during the week.

I wonder how many things you got down.

I've got quite a lot here.

I'm going to go through them quite quickly, and this is just to give you an idea of the variety of things that might happen in a church building.

And this is not everything.

I'm sure that if I gave it a bit more thought, I could probably think of a few more things as well, or I'm sure someone could correct me and add a few more things as well, because the church buildings are used for a huge variety of things.

Some are used like a real community centre and have lots of spaces that people might even hire out, and you have lots of groups going in during the week.

Others might be smaller and have less things going on.

We'll go through some of these examples and I'll give you an opportunity to pause and add them to your own mindmap.

So, starting nearest me, and then we're going to go around clockwise, we've already talked about church services, and there might be several church services during the week, not just on a Sunday.

There might be quieter services midweek on a Wednesday morning, or there might be evening groups meeting up in the week as well.

Weddings and funerals often take place in churches.

Lots of people, even if they're not religious, normally want to have weddings and funerals in a church as well, because they might like the sense of tradition or they might find it comforting, et cetera, et cetera.

So, weddings and funerals will happen during the week at churches as well.

Food banks, we're going to look at this a little bit more later in the lesson, but this is where there's a store of nonperishable food, that's food that's not going to go off and go mouldy, that people can come and take if they need it.

They're in an emergency situation.

Christenings, so that does link to baptisms as well.

That might take place during a church service.

Support groups.

That could be a huge variety of things.

That could be something like Alcoholics Anonymous, or it could be something like a group for vulnerable people in the community to go to and spend some time.

It could be for people are lonely and isolated.

It could be for refugees, or lots and lots of different groups who need somewhere to go where they can meet other people and maybe get some help as well, or just see a friendly face.

Brownies and Scouts or Guides and Cubs and things like that.

Again, it's something that if you ever went to Brownies or Scouts or anything, then you probably did meet up in a church hall, because these groups often do.

Toddler groups, I've already talked about.

Lots and lots of churches will have free toddler groups for parents to go to during the week, or maybe they would only charge a pound or something like that for parents to go in.

And that's actually a very, very helpful thing for lots of parents who might otherwise feel quite isolated if they don't know any other parents in the area, and they might not be at work 'cause they're looking after their baby.

And they might just be looking forward to speaking to another adult for a little while during the week.

So, toddler groups is actually a really big thing that lots of churches do to support local parents in their community.

There might be soup kitchens or homeless shelters.

Some churches will take part in a winter shelter where they take turns in the local community to host homeless people, give them a hot meal, and a bed for the night so that when it's cold, they have somewhere safe to sleep.

Youth groups, so that could be for Christian youth who are part of the church, or it could just be for any youth in the area to come along to, and they might have a tuck shop and they might have some games and things like that.

Again, it's providing somewhere safe for young people to spend time so they're not hanging around on the streets or somewhere dangerous.

And things like lunches for the elderly.

So, again, those people who might be more vulnerable or lonely, they might provide these lunches and invite people along to just meet one another and enjoy having a community.

So, we can see a huge variety of things that might take part in a church building.

What we're going to do is we're going to pause for a moment, and you are going to answer a couple of questions about it.

In the question in the pause point, you were asked to include some evidence in your answer.

It's very handy that I asked you to write out those quotations earlier on, so you had them to hand.

So, I'm just going to go through my model answer with you, and it's color-coded, so my point is in purple.

I've got a very long point on this one.

I've got my evidence in pink and my explanation in green just so you can see the different parts of the answer.

So, one way in which Christians might work in their local community, so I've repeated the question in my answer to make sure I don't deviate and start talking about something else, is through using the church building.

For example, they might host toddler groups for local parents which offer support and a place to meet other parents.

This is because in the Bible, it says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son." Providing a place for people with young children to go is a way of showing God's love for them.

So, we've linked into the quotation.

We've explained why Christians might run a toddler group.

So, my second paragraph, another way in which Christians might work in their local communities, again, I've repeated the question, is through using the church building to help people who are homeless.

For example, a church might host a soup kitchen, or even allow homeless people to sleep in the building.

This is because in the Bible, it says, "I tell you, whenever you did this "for one of the least important of these followers of mine, "you did it for me." Many Christians believe they will be judged on how they help others, as if they were helping Jesus when they did those deeds.

What we're going to do now is I'm going to give you an opportunity to pause, and you can add to your own answer based on the paragraph I've got here.

And I will go back to the other one as well, because I didn't give you an opportunity to pause and add to your answer.

So, pause now for this paragraph and we'll go to the other one.

Pause for this one to add to your answers.

I hope you got down some additions to your answers based on my model answers.

Always think about whether you're explaining something in full and whether you're using the quotation clearly.

Sometimes I say to my students is, when you're explaining a belief in RE, you need to imagine you're explaining it to an alien who's just landed on earth and has absolutely no clue about anything to do with religion.

Never assume that someone knows what's in your head because when you write in an examination, the examiner will have never met you before.

If you don't explain what you know in full, they won't know you know it.

So, it's always good to be extra clear when you're writing your answer.

We're going to look at Christian charities in the local community.

So, we've talked about the Church, or churches in the local community.

Charities often work alongside local churches, so they often work with the churches, but they might not be a church themself.

But when it comes to local charities, often local church members will volunteer for those charities, or might even run them.

Christians may also support those charities by giving donations either of money or maybe of food.

So, for example, harvest is something that's often celebrated in schools.

You might have taken part in a harvest festival.

Well, in schools, if you do do a harvest festival, often you bring in some food to give to a food bank.

That's something that churches often do as well, so that is one way in which churches might support a local charity.

We're going to look at two charities that work alongside churches to support local communities.

The first thing we're going to look at is the Trussell Trust.

Now, the Trussell, the Trussell Trust is hard to say, for one thing.

The Trussell Trust is a food bank, and it was founded on Christian principles to help people in emergency situations.

We're going to look at a little bit of information about the Trussell Trust food banks, and then you're going to answer some questions.

The Trussell Trust was founded in 1997, and it runs food banks providing emergency food, help, and support to people in crisis in the UK.

It is based on Christian principles.

What that means is that you don't have to be a Christian to work for the charity, but they, the founders, based it on this belief that all people should be loved and provided for, which came from their Christian faith.

It aims to bring people, religious and nonreligious, together to work towards ending poverty and hunger in Britain.

Rising prices, cuts in welfare benefits, redundancy, family breakdown, and unexpected expense might all contribute to an emergency situation.

Nonperishable food is donated to the food banks by churches, supermarkets, schools, businesses, and individuals, and is sorted by volunteers, including making sure it's within date.

Care professionals such as doctors, health visitors, and social workers identify people in crisis and issue a food voucher.

In exchange for their food voucher, three days of nutritionally balanced food is provided.

There are around 420 Trussell Trust food banks in the UK, and each year they provide food for nearly 1 million people.

And there's actually been a real increase in people accessing food banks in recent years, people who've been in those emergency situations and really, really needed food.

So, this is how Trussell Trust really helps a lot of people.

What you're going to do now is you're going to explain what the Trussell Trust does and how it provides food for people in emergency situations.

The next thing we're going to look at is Street Pastors.

Now, Street Pastors are not necessarily trained vicars or anything like that, but they are people who are trained to offer support to people who are maybe out on the streets or on a night out or something like that.

They aim to help to be a reassuring presence in the community and to prevent antisocial behaviour or help anyone who's vulnerable.

They wear a blue reflective jacket.

We've got this example here of a Street Pastor, and they'll often become a familiar face to people on a night out.

So, again, I'm going to read through some information on Street Pastors, and then you guys are going to explain what they do.

Street Pastors began in the UK in 2003 as an initiative of a Christian charity called the Ascension Trust.

Adult volunteers receive training in order to patrol the streets in urban areas, so they're in town centres and things like that.

They do not have the power to enforce the law, but they provide a reassuring presence in local communities.

They respond to problems in society like drunkenness, antisocial behaviour, and fear of crime.

They aim to help and care for vulnerable people in practical ways, working closely with councils and the police in their local communities.

They wear a blue reflective Street Pastor uniform, and their aim is not to actively preach, but to provide a positive service to their local areas.

Their work includes listening to people's problems and giving guidance regarding agencies which might be able to help, and discouraging antisocial behaviour.

They are backed up by prayer partners, Prayer Pastors who pray for the Street Pastors and the work that they are doing.

So, often, if a group of Street Pastors are out in the evening, there'll be another group of people praying, perhaps in a local church or just in their homes, for the work that they are doing.

And just to give you a sense of what a Street Pastor does, have you ever walked past a group of people and been a bit frightened or intimidated by them, especially if it was in the evening or something like that? But if you walked past a group of people who you found a bit frightening, but there was a police officer nearby, you probably would not feel quite as worried because you'd think, well, if anything bad happened, I could go and speak to the police officer.

Well, Street Pastors offers something similar.

They can't arrest people or anything like that, but they're like a safe person or people who would be around if somebody was feeling intimidated or frightened, or if there were a group of people who were trying to start fights or who were drunk and being noisy and antisocial, then the Street Pastors are trained to calm down the situation and speak to people and prevent that antisocial behaviour.

They may speak to the police.

They might phone the police if necessary, or they just might make sure somebody gets home safely or something like that.

That's the main work that Street Pastors do.

So, now you're going to pause and see if you can explain their work.

Well done for writing down your answers.

We're going to have some quick-fire questions now.

So, which organisation helps to provide food for people in emergency situations? It's Trussell Trust.

Which Bible verse best fits with the belief that Christians will be judged on their deeds? I'm going to give you a moment to read through this one.

Okay, it is, "I tell you, whenever you did this for the least of the, "did this for one of the least important "of these followers of mine, "you did it for me." That one is focused on judgement because it comes from the parable of the sheep and the goats.

Which Bible verse best fits with the belief that true faith is expressed in deeds? Again, I'm going to give you a little bit of time to read through them and have a think.

"So it is with faith: "if it is alone and includes no actions, "then it is dead." That expresses the idea that faith without actions is dead.

It's not a real faith if you're not helping people.

Last one, which Bible verse best fits with the belief that all people are valuable because Jesus died for them? There we go, it's, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son "so that everyone who believes in him may not die, "but have eternal life." You might have got that one through process of elimination.

So, which of the options below is not the way in which the church building is used to help the local community? The answer is Street Pastors.

Street Pastors are going out of the church into the community.

They might have Prayer Pastors praying for them in the church, but the church itself is not used for the work of the Street Pastors.

Which of the options below is not a reason why Christians will help the local community? They want to look good in the newspapers, or at least we hope that's not a reason why that they would help the local community, because that is not commanded in the Bible.

Okay, so we are going to look at a discuss question now, an evaluate question.

I'm not going to get you to write a whole answer to this, but it's really important that we regularly look at evaluate questions and think about how we might answer them.

And so, writing plans for evaluate questions can be really, really helpful.

So, just a reminder, in these questions, you need to explain reasons for and against the statement.

You need to use what you have learned about Christianity, so don't guess or make things up because the examiner will know, all right? Go with proper knowledge.

You will need a conclusion, and you need to explain in that conclusion which side of the argument you think is most convincing.

So, you need to make a judgement , and it's always best to just stick to Christian teachings when you are answering questions on the Christianity units.

If you're answering questions on the themes unit, that's when you can bring in other religions as well.

So, the question you've got here is, helping the local community is more important than church services.

Now, in this lesson, we have looked at what happens in church services.

I gave you examples of types of worship, like sung worship and prayer and things like that.

And we've also looked at why Christians will help their local community.

What you need to include is reasons why Christians will help the local community, but link into those reasons how they will do it.

So, "Christians might help their local community because, "dot, dot, dot, dot.

"For example, they will." So, what do they do because of that? But for now, I'm just going to get you to bullet point some ideas.

Write down as much as you can think of, lots and lots of different ideas.

What's always useful is to put it into a for and against column.

You don't have to do that now.

You might just want to get down as much as you can think of.

You could always sort them out later, but when I show you some of my ideas, they are going to be in an agree and disagree column.

So, get on to that task now, and we'll have a look at some of my ideas, too.

Thank you so much for taking part in this lesson.

I hope that you've learned a lot more about what the church does in the local communities and now see, if you didn't before, that church isn't just about what happens on a Sunday for a lot of Christians.

Now you can take part in your exit quiz, and if you're taking part in the next lesson, then I will see you then.