Last year our Parish was thrilled to be successful in our grant application to the “Let the Children Live” fund for $600 to purchase a collection of children’s books.

We are a small Co-operating Parish located approximately 15 minutes north of central Whangarei. The majority of our attendees are over retirement age, with currently only one family with primary aged children regularly attending, and grandchildren of others attending from time to time. We don’t offer a Sunday school programme, but we are trying to make our services more inter-generationally friendly. The books we purchased with the grant money are available for the children to read, worship leaders to share during our services and during services they lead at local Rest Homes, and for other adults to access as they wish.

Our intention is that children who come to our services will feel welcome in our church when they are introduced to special books just for them. It is also our hope that children will recognise themselves, and others they know, in the illustrations of these books, as people of different sizes, nationalities, and abilities are represented. Through reading these books, children will learn that God created them, and that God loves them the way they were created to be. For older children, we hope that these books might introduce them to new ways of thinking about God, as well as stories and parables they may have heard before, showing them that theology is a wide spectrum, and that different people interpret passages in different ways.

Some of the books we chose are as follows:A Very Big Problem, Animal Tales, I am God’s Dream, Jesus Showed Us! Mother God, Stories Jesus Told, The Good for Nothing Tree, The Marvelous Mustard Seed, What is God Like?, When God Made Light, When God Made the World, When God Made You, Who Counts? 100 Sheep, 10 Coins, and 2 Sons, Who is My Neighbour

(Authors include, Matthew Turner, Bradley Jersak, Teresa Pecinovsky, Nick Butterworth, Amy-Jill Levine, Sandy Eisenberg, Annie Bowler, Rachel Held Evans,

We have been able to pay a koha to the school next door for a mobile bookstand to store these lovely books on and to use to store stationery supplies, paper and activity sheets for use during services.