Enrolments and Sunday School
Tuesday, 03 February, 2004
I was going to post this yesterday but Movable Type ate my post which just goes to show that, if you're going to write a long post, you should save it regularly in draft form as you write or write it all into another text-based program, again saving regularly.
Last week we had enrolments. Unlike some other universities, ECU has a very good relationships with this university which means that they love it when we help out on enrolment days. Monday to Thursday last week from 8:30 to 1 ECU set up a table outside the Union Hall and staff members and senior students showed up, often wearing ECU T-shirts, to talk to new students. Our basic aims were:
- To help new students—particularly with directions if they needed to go somewhere; we'd usually walk them all the way there which surprised them because most people would just point and leave them to it;
- To make new students feel at home and welcome on campus.
If we managed to get into a conversation about Christianity or the Bible or Jesus, then great, but that wasn't one of the primary aims.
I met a guy who asked me straight out what ECU was so I got the wonderful opportunity to explain. I asked him if he was a Christian and he said, “No, I'm Catholic.” I asked him if he was interested in reading the Bible with someone. He seemed sort of keen but concerned about the amount of time that would take. I don't think I handled the conversation particularly well because talking to strangers is not my forte (though I don't fear it; I'm just not very good at sustaining conversations with people I don't know very well) and unfortunately I didn't have an ECU flier to give him so that he could take it home and think more about what we do and whether or not he'd like to do it too, but I did get to show him the building in which we have main meetings (because I was taking him there) and I did get to say to him, "We'd love to read the Bible with you if you would like," and I think he appreciated that, even if he wasn't very interested at the time.
I did all day Thursday and then two hours on Friday. I didn't feel like I could do more than that because I find enrolments quite exhausting (striking up personal conversations with people all day is really draining) so for the rest of Friday I sat in the Chaplaincy and started working on my Sunday school lesson.
Last year we had Point 5's (preschool and under) and High 5's (Kindergarten to Year 5). Because of the enormous number of children in High 5's (some weeks it could get up to 40 kids which is really more than three leaders can handle), it was decided that the groups should be split up differently this year. So now we have the creche group for babies and preschoolers who are not in their final year of pre-school; a group for final year preschoolers to Year 1; and a group for Year 2 to Year 5 (ages 7 to 10) which has a common time for a while and then splits into boys and girls. I'm teaching the girls in this group in conjunction with two other leaders and Sunday was the first lesson for the year.
We're using a set of books called On the Way which I like because they go through the Bible systematically, however they often leave out important bits (like the conversion of Saul) and their lesson aims don't always correlate with the Bible. The book we have is obviously a continuation of a previous book beacuse the first lesson is about Samson. I thought it was important to give the kids a sense of where we were up to in the Bible so I made them a 96-piece puzzle of the Bible story. It took two days to make and I did it using cardboard and my own drawings (which aren't very good, by the way). When I finished, I gave it a test run with Ben. It took him half an hour to put together so, during the actual lesson, I only gave the girls half the puzzle to do. It took them about 10-15 minutes.
My Big Point for the lesson was that God's judges fight for God's people, save God's people from their enemies and protect God's people, with our ultimate judge being Jesus. I did this by getting the girls to mime a verb which the others had to guess and then I told them the story of Samson's verse using pictures that I had also drawn (again, not very good; Ben laughed at my picture of baby Samson). I also made them a worksheet with Samson on one side and Jesus on the other with words for them to fill in.
Always the perfectionist, I felt bad about running overtime (I let the girls go 10 mins after everyone else because I wasn't watching the time) and for not being firmer with the girls who were acting up (putting themselves into the closet shelves when I told them not to) but overall it was a good lesson and I think they understood and enjoyed it (mostly).
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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It sounds like your enrolment help procedure is fantastic! No-one ever walks anyone anywhere at uni; I thought it was a great idea to walk new students to their building, because it gives you a good chance to talk with them.
We use On the Way at Sunday school as well, and have also found it a bit trying at times.