What is collective worship?

Christian worship is an honouring of God. It acknowledges His transcendence and Holiness, (His "worth" and "value") it is a loving response to His nature as revealed in Jesus Christ. Worship stems from personal experience; it is a central characteristic of faith communities which are in relationship with God. We can never make anyone worship because it is an attitude of the heart focused on God; in the school situation "all" we can do is lead people to the threshold of worship by providing a setting where they may worship God if they so wish.

Collective worship only takes place in schools. It is a term which is used only in education, whereas churches and religions usually think of their worship as being corporate. The implication of this is that when a group of people gather together due to shared beliefs with the intention of sharing worship then this is a corporate activity. No such assumptions about shared beliefs can be made in the case of a school community, even a church school. The school is a collection of people who come from a variety of backgrounds and who happen to be together primarily for the purpose of education, not for worship. The family backgrounds of pupils may be very different in terms of beliefs and adherence to religion, from the atheist, secular humanist to a devout background of a faith, either Christian or another world religion. Where parents have choice about which school their child attends, this is often limited by geographical factors and the church school still cannot claim the right to use school collective worship as an act of corporate worship. What takes place in collective worship must take account of the varied backgrounds of the pupils (and staff) as well as of their ages and aptitudes.

In collective worship children and adults will be responding to the worship on offer in different ways and at different levels; some will be passive observers, learning about worship but not participating in it; some will be "at the threshold", interested in the process and participating in it but not full believers; for others the act of collective worship may be a time of real worship of God. It is the task of collective worship to provide a setting in which the integrity of those present is not compromised but in which everyone finds something positive for themselves.

Collective worship plays a central role in a Church School; it models the school's Christian ethos and values, and proclaims its Church School identity. As a result it should:

• Have a recognised place in key school documents such as the Statement of Aims or Statement of Purpose
• Be well organised, planned, delivered and resourced
• Be special and different from ordinary classroom activities, offering a sense of occasion
• Be both inclusive and unifying, recognising the personal integrity of all members of the school community
• Be real worship

A fuller set of collective worship aims may be found in chapter 4.

Contents

1. What is worship?
2. Collective Worship and the law
3. The Anglican Tradition
4. The Aims of Collective Worship
5. The Policy
6. Ways of planning and recording
7. Planning Issues
8. Collective worship ideas and support on the world wide web
9. Asking Visitors to lead worship
10. Guidelines to be given to Visitors to lead worship
11. Are Assembly and Collective worship the same thing?
12. Themes and schemes for planning collective worship
13. Bible stories for use with collective worship themes
14. Involving pupils in Collective worship

Document Downloads

• Collective Worship in Church Schools