At St. Mary’s, Collective worship is a special time when all members of our school community come together to develop spiritually, whether they have a faith or not. We ‘bring out the best in each other so that all can know fullness of life’. John 10:10
We have two worship groups named Encourage and Inspire. These represent a vertical split of the school where a class from every year group is represented. These groups meet twice per week in the hall for worship, and once every 2 weeks for a Congratualtions Worship. Worship is organised around themes which link directly to our school vision statement and ‘Sunshine Six’ Christian values. Hymns and songs are planned and organised around these themes.
Once every half term, the children take part in a Service at St Mary’s Church in these two groups. The Services are planned around the Church calendar and the half term themes from school collective worship. Teachers, pupils and clergy plan these services together to make sure that every single member of our community can join in and enjoy our worship toegther.
Spiritual Development in our school is very important and collective worship provides a key opportunity for our pupils to explore this. We share with our pupils the four key concepts that sit behind our school definition of Spirituality. These are displayed in the poster (which can be found in all classrooms in our school). We believe that Spiritual Development is personal and can mean different things to different members of our community depending on their faith and beliefs. We believe that Spiritual Development is open to all and forms part of our inclusive offer during collective worship as well as throughout the rest of our school lives.
Some key practices in our worship our distinctly Anglican and some Christian Spiritual practices are used in an invitational and inclusive way. Some of these are: prayer, stilling, dwelling in the word.
Our Worship Council lead, review and monitor our worship. They take responsibility for ensuring that our pattern of worship is followed, lead collective prayers and reflections, review worship, the hymns and songs we sing and also gather the opinions of their peers. In the classrooms, Worship Councillors support others in leading worship too. They plan Services for Church and also meet Governors to share what they have found out.
We are a Church school whose community is made up of families from many differing faith backgrounds and some do not have a faith. Our pattern of worship is distincly Anglican whilst remaining inclusive for all. Our Worship follows the pattern of: Gathering, Word, Response and Sending. An example of our pattern of worship slides can be found here.
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