Youth and children have always been important to the church – indeed the present church hall was originally built specifically for the Sunday School. However, as explained earlier, modern needs require us to create new spaces for our work with children. The children and youth provision will be housed in a new building attached to the present hall and accessed by a connecting corridor. Great attention has been given to designing facilities that are flexible but child-friendly, including their own toilet provision, safe play area and a sensory room for work with children (and adults) with disabilities.
There are few facilities locally which are available for young people and we wish to make possible a range of after-school and evening activities also. The youth area will have its own door and for evening activities can be made accessible without passing through the main building. This area will feature a fully-equipped media room, classrooms, space for the church’s interns as well as a small cafe area.
TrainingOne of the rooms in the youth area will be equipped with state of the art video conferencing facilities that will enable us to act as a ‘hub church’ for the New Wine Theological Training initiative. This initiative is for interns and also mature students, gathering in groups for university-certified and biblically-based training from certificate level right through to, potentially, ordination.
The children’s rooms can also be divided into smaller classrooms