For Families, Children, and Youth

Welcome!  We invite you on an adventure, destination unknown. In fact we may arrive at no settled place, but continue to wander in the wilderness, always improving our sense of direction and growing stronger. Along the way we encourage you to expand your horizon of your reflection and challenge the frontier of your thought. We suggest you stop thinking “outside the box” and use the box to start a fire on the wide open spaces where the Spirit roams. We hope you will question and explore incessantly, retreat when necessary, and always appreciate new discoveries with awe and wonder. We might need to take steep, rocky roads to fully appreciate the beautiful vision God offers. So we pray that you harbor no satisfaction with easy answers to hard questions.

Teach while you learn; learn while you teach; share. Be honest, playful, and kind. Drink deeply from the refreshing stream of God’s presence. Breathe deeply of the crisp fresh wind of the Spirit. Live deeply. Above all, take delight, enjoy and laugh!

Welcome to the Christian Growth pages of the Congregational Church in Exeter’s website. Here you will find all you need to know about the programs and activities we offer for adults, children and teenagers in this community of faith. Please feel free to explore and discover what is available. And if you would like to be a part of any of these programs and activities, we would love to see you!

"Godly Play" for Children

What is Godly Play?

Godly Play is a Montessori-related approach to learning which enables children in pre-Kindergarten through Grade 6 to experience the presence of a loving God and discover how to “speak the language” of their biblical faith.

What makes Godly Play distinctive?

With Godly Play, we tell Bible stories to children to encourage them to enter into the stories and relate them to their personal experiences. Godly Play is concerned with the spiritual development of each child as an individual and with modeling the appropriate moral behaviors expected of people living within the Christian community.

Will my child enjoy Godly Play?

One of the goals of Godly Play is to create a safe space for children...a place where their ideas, opinions, and gifts are deeply respected. Because everything in our classrooms is designed for children to use and enjoy, most children look forward to Church School.

How will my child benefit from Godly Play?

The most important thing we teach in church school is how Christian people live and work together in community. Many parents who have children in the Godly Play program find that their children will begin to retell the Bible stories - often in the car on the way home from church. Parents also report that their children ”wonder” aloud at various times during the week about the meaning of the Bible stories they heard on Sunday.

Some of the Stories We Tell:

• • The great stories of the Hebrew Bible including…
• o Creation
• o The Great Family
• o The Exodus
• o The 10 Best Ways
• o Jonah
• • The stories about Jesus and the lessons he taught including…
• o The Holy Family
• o The Parables
• o Jesus and the 12 Disciples
• • The stories about the great traditions of our faith including…
• o How the church tells time
• o Baptism
• o Holy Communion

Youth

We offer a Confirmation program to all 8th and 9th graders in our church school and youth groups. Confirmation marks the beginning of that journey toward adulthood in which an individual takes responsibility for shaping one’s own values and faith, and discovering how to express them in daily living. We have designed our confirmation program to provide young people with the tools to question and explore ways in which they can construct a faith and a worldview which relates to their lives and their stories. We are dedicated to being a community of faith and supporting each individual on this journey. The program focuses on a confirmand-mentor relationship. Confirmand and mentor will meet regularly to talk about their individual faith journeys, share in several church or community service projects, or to attend a worship service from another religious tradition. There will also be monthly meetings and several events when confirmands will have the chance to gather together, to get to know each other better, to share and learn.

We offer a youth group for senior high for grades 9 through 12. The group meets weekly on Sunday afternoons 1-3pm, for discussions, games and a variety of activities. The program for the group includes special events, retreats, social outreach activities and trips. For instance, the youth of our congregation (high school and confirmands) planned, prepared and served a meal at Salvation Army.

Opportunities for Families Abound!