Asking Visitors to lead collective worship

Many schools appreciate the contribution that visitors can make to collective worship. They can enrich the school's collective worship experience, and offer opportunities for pupils to learn from others beyond the school community. Some may be regular visitors, such as the local incumbent or other Christian leaders; others may be occasional visitors, perhaps asked for a particular event. Whether regular or occasional, the visitor does need some help from the school about what is expected of them, and may need some guidance about how to approach a group of pupils of a particular age, and what are appropriate topics to use with them. Some guidelines for visitors need to be developed so that the school and the visitor can feel comfortable with the occasion and the possibility for inadvertent disaster is limited

When briefing visitors for school worship, make sure you tell them:

• who exactly will attend, whether it will be the whole school or a section of it, and if so, which section
• how long the speaker is expected to talk for
• the current assembly theme and context for the speaker - what has already been done and what will be done later in the term
• how pupils and staff are normally involved in collective worship
• what resources or hardware are available to them, should they so wish
• exactly how much their contribution will be - is it just the talk or will they be asked to choose the hymn and lead the prayers

and:

• give them plenty of notice - don't assume that a visitor who wears an RE or religious "hat" can produce an assembly at a few moments notice!
• invite them to attend an act of collective worship beforehand so that they may see how the school conducts them, or, if this is not practical, lend them a copy of the collective worship policy document
• some visitors may also need to be told that collective worship is not an appropriate vehicle for hard sell evangelism, and that inclusive language ("we all believe…") is to be avoided

Visitors who are regularly involved in collective worship should appreciate sensitive feedback on the appropriateness of their contribution to the school assembly programme.

Chapter 10 of this document may be printed off and adapted as a handout to be given to a visiting collective worship leader.

And finally… NEVER leave a visiting speaker to take an act of collective worship alone, it is bad manners, bad educational practice, and bad churchmanship!

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