Traditionally Arun Community Church has run various clubs for children and young people. Some were to teach the Christian faith, others purely social, with others seen as an outreach to the community that fit in with the government’s Extended Schools agenda. In fact, we do so much that people have had trouble putting it all in some sort of context.
As a team, we’ve spent the last few months thinking and praying about direction. In a relatively short space of time we’ve developed a strategy, found an amazing team, changed much of what we were doing and then this morning at church, we explained it to the wider congregation!

We now understand our work in three key areas: Church, Community and School. By developing a range of clubs, activities and services in these areas we hope to be ‘salt and light’, engaging with children and young people in different areas of their lives.

In order to facilitate this change in thinking, we’ve also totally overhauled our church-based clubs with new names, teams and content. These are the logos for the new groups:

We’ve also pulled our community activities into a tighter relationship with each other and they now run at similar times and work together. As for schools work, we’re proposing to deliver a far more holistic programme in schools by following the model of LCET. This will take some time to role out, but will really complement the things we are doing in the other areas. For more info on the actual activities we run, click here.

It’s been a busy time getting all this ready for a new term and there’s a lot going on in Littlehampton with regard to children’s and youth work. I’m just really excited that the church is at the forefront!