What can you do to brighten up the dull days during a winter New Year lockdown? Have an online Teens and Tweens' Day!
It has been 6 months since we last had a Teens and Tweens' Day, and we know that young people and their families enjoy them. We also know that some young people are looking for something a bit different from the regular Sabbath Services, and even those above the teenage years enjoy something different. We even saw one young lady in her twenties comment on social media that she falls asleep during Zoom services. So how can we keep them awake and engaged? Interactive services.
Sabbath 23 January saw many young people and their families join online for a programme themed 'Go Light Your World'. They had opportunity to take part in a Zoom poll (what age groups are watching? and how are you feeling?), write prayer requests in the chat, and annotate on the screen. Worship in songs familiar and new, ranging from the children's action song 'This Little Light of Mine' to 'Christ Be Our Light', was led by one family live, and another with songs they had previously recorded. The children's story about the girl who lit the lighthouse by standing on her Bible was illustrated with drama photos staged by the Barratt-Peacock family, and there were live testimonies about shining our lights in the community. After the service, the young people were able to join their own breakout room for some social time including playing Kahoot.
Families and young people joined from Scotland to Portsmouth, from London, Birmingham and Manchester. In the first T&T online programme (April 2020) we extended our Zoom capacity from the normal 100 devices in case of extras but did not need it. This time we thought there would be less, but also added YouTube live-streaming just in case. We reached our 100-device limit and had a further 45 on YouTube, the largest proportion of attendees being in the teenage bracket, and we estimate that over half of attending devices were for people who had never been to a Teens and Tweens' event before! We feel humbled and blessed that so many families saw the value in this for their young people.
Thanks goes to the Barratt-Peacocks for the main body of the messages, to Kumbie for the Bible reading to Ali for the opening prayer, to Rawleka, Kevier and Joey for overseeing the Zoom operation, and to everyone for attending and interacting.
Some comments we received:
"I loved this – thank you."
"Fantastic programme. I was truly blessed by all contributions. May God continue to bless your ministry."
"My children had a blessed day today. Thank you. They really enjoyed worshipping with you."
"So nice to see everyone! Thank you to the organisers."
"Thank you – a beautiful service!"
"Thank you very much :-) We loved it."
The next online Teens and Tweens' event is being organised by the young people of the Cheltenham Adventist church and will go live on Sabbath 27 March.
