Fenland Community Church

Our Resources
General ideas

General ideas

Here are some of the things we have learned at Fenland Community Church while working with adults with a learning disability

Some general ideas
Use of Language Separate page
Using things e.g material, instruments, voice, noise etc.
Worship
Hardware / software including projection Separate page
Bibles and Books
External links

Also take a look at our alphabetical list of resources.

Some General Ideas

Try to make things as concrete as possible. Try to avoid complex language and/or strange rituals.
We need to discard many of our previous ideas of what church is, and what a church service should be. Flexibility is key! If that means that it appears chaotic, then so be it.
Have fun!
Be tolerant of as wide a range of behaviours as you possibly can. Noise and chaos may well mean that people are either trying to communicate with us, or worshipping God in the only way they can.
Involve as many people as possible.
Try not to get discouraged! This is hard work but incredibly rewarding. They may misunderstand you, forget what you are teaching, get confused, fall asleep, stop coming, say they are bored and so on, but keep going - who else is going to?
Do all you can to avoid embarrassing people by asking them to do what they cannot. Concentrate on what they can do.

Using things

As far as possible use things to back up what you are talking about. So if you are talking about the cross, have a small wooden one that you can pass around, especially allowing those who cannot see very well to touch and feel it.

Use examples that can be backed up with tangeable items. We have used things like

Sand trays
Stones
Flowers
Potted plants
All sorts of household items ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. Experiment!

We also us an overhead projector - see this page. Our reason for this is:

To add a visual element to what we are saying
The visual element enhances the words and helps understanding
To add some comic element where appropriate

As for language, we try to use the same photo/clipart for the same concept. In a sense we are developing a limited vocabulary of pictures

Worship

Our experience is that we rarely manage anything that is anything like anything! Our worship times can be noisy, tuneless, instruments are out of time, people wander around, flags are waved all over the place and so on. But God is there!

Many of our folk can only mange a feeble shake of an instrument, some can only shout, some sit and watch. We now enjoy this wide range of activity, and visitors comment that this is the only church they go to where nearly everyone is involved!

We have available flags, banners, soft material, and various percussion instruments. So long as people are safe, this is their way of worshiping God, so let it rip!

We also sometimes use Makaton signing. We are not too skilled, but this is popular.

As for the songs themselves, we use a lot of the PROSPECTS songs. We try to select songs that are simple and straightforward, but this can be hard. Some children's songs are appropriate, some are not. We need to remember that our folk have a learning disability, but they are not children.

Interestingly we have found that many so-called children's songs are popular. Equally some of the main stream songs, even though they are wordy and jargon-ridden, are equally popular! You will have to try a range and see what is liked.

Bibles and Books

We do not use one version routinely. For our group we are of the opinion that all versions are far too complex. We do tend to write our own versions as we go along. However you might like to look at the following:

"Easy to read version" published by World Bible Translation Center. ISBN 1-885427-38-7. I still think that on occasions it is not concrete enough, and there are too many difficult words and constructs.
"The Message" by Eugene H Peterson, published by NAV Press. This has a heavy American bias, but is an excellent starting point nevertheless. It is too complex as it stands
"The Street Bible" by Rob Lacey published by Zondervan. ISBN 0 00 7107900. Bits of this are excellent to get you thinking, but do be selective!
The Lion Story Teller Bible - Written by Bob Holman. ISBN 0 7459 36075 - Lion Publishing 1995 Hardback; 2001 Paperback

Remember that all these translations and many more can be looked at here: Bible Gateway

Other books we use to help us. None are perfect but they all give us some ideas sometimes:

Telling More Tales, by Dave and Lynn Hopwood, published by CPAS ISBN 1 8976 6097 9 (1998)
Telling even more tales, by Dave and Lynn Hopwood, published by CPAS. ISBN 1 902041 11 9 (2000)
Multi-sensory Prayer by Sue Wallace, published by Scripture Union. ISBN 1 85999 462 (2000)
Multi-Sensory Church, by Sue Wallace, Published by Scripture Union. ISBN 1 85999 667 1 (2002)
Multi-Sensory Scripture, by Sue Wallace, Published by Scripture Union. ISBN 1 84427 166 8
Play on Words by Kevin Mayhew. ISBN 1 84003 623 0
Easter cracked published by Scripture Union, ISBN 1 84427 189 7 (2005)
A Church for all ages - A practical approach to all-age worship. by Peter Graystone and Eileen Turner. Published by Scripture Union. ISBN 0 86201 859 5 (1993)
100 ideas for all-age worship by Sue Relf. Published by Kingsway Publications, ISBN 0 85476 763 0 ( 1998)
New Parish prayers edited by Frank Colquhoun. Published by Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-90841-9 (1982)
The wee worship book, published by the Wild Goose Worship Group, The Iona Community, Pearce Institute, Govan, Glasgow, G51 3UT(1989)
Multi-Sensory Ideas for Worship, by Irene Smale, Published by David C Cook, ISBN 978 1 84291392 5 (2009)

I also search on the internet and occasionally find some gems!

Links

Count Everyone in An organisation that equips and inspires God's church to be welcoming and accessible to all.

English Language online tools

Online Easy English Bible

Makaton (Does not always load. Keep trying!)

Further resources are here:
Our main resources page.
Our A to Z listing

Our ResourcesGeneral ideas