The Aims of Collective Worship

When planning collective worship in your School it is important to ask how the worship is related to the school's Mission Statement or Statement of Purpose. It is frequently stated that, by virtue of their foundation, worship in church schools should be of the highest quality and a central activity in the life of the school. Effective collective worship is one way in which a Church School can give expression to its founding Trust Deed.

Below are some of the accepted aims of collective worship in a Church School:

• To provide an opportunity for the children to reflect upon God and to give Him honour
• To help children discover their place in the world.
• To highlight and nurture the spiritual dimension through experiencing worship.
• To provide children with a vocabulary of worship and an experience of a wide variety of worship forms, including symbols and imagery.
• To provide an opportunity to celebrate major, and some minor, Christian festivals.
• To heighten awareness of the ultimate questions / realities of life and to provide the opportunity to reflect upon these. To support the search for meaning.
• To enable children to appreciate their worth and value to God, and to the community, and to respect the integrity of all individuals as a child of God
• To enable pupils to make effective use of silence in opportunities for reflection, contemplation, meditation and prayer.
• To celebrate gifts, talents and achievements.
• To establish, explore, and reinforce the common Christian values of the school community such as love, peace, kindness, compassion.
• To foster a feeling of community and belonging in the school through a sharing of experiences and feelings.
• To develop personal relationships and to encourage social development.
• To provide an opportunity to empathise with the needs of others.
• To provide an opportunity for children to become acquainted with people from the local and wider community, particularly the local church.
• To encourage respect and care for God's creation by a positive attitude to both local and global environmental issues.
• To foster feelings such as awe, wonder, thankfulness, mystery and joy.
• To give memorable and enjoyable experiences.
• To provide an opportunity to bring before God in prayer personal needs and those of others.
• To share with participants some of the central teachings of the Christian faith at an appropriate level, and thereby give them the encouragement to explore their own beliefs and understanding of God within a Christian framework.

Whilst these are more distinctively Anglican:

• Using prayers from Common Worship
• Using Anglican sentences and responses e.g.
• The Lord is here / His Spirit is with us
• Peace be with you/ and also with you
• Go in peace to love and serve the Lord / In the name of Christ, Amen
• Using Collects as a focus for worship
• Eucharists
• Encouraging links with the worship of the local parish church

The Anglican Church is a worldwide church with a strong commitment to ecumenism, so Church of England schools should also feel free to draw upon appropriate materials from other Christian churches in their collective worship, as well as inviting visitors from other churches to lead collective worship on occasions.

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