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News
A-level and GCSE Religious Studies entries increase for third year Trace your family fortunes with Church of England’s latest web development ChristianSat Guide helps explain Digital Satellite TV & Radio Twelve Baskets – sharing resources for the good of all Watch out, thieves, there’s prayer about!
A-level and GCSE Religious Studies entries increase for third year More students than ever have opted to take A-levels in Religious Studies. Recent statistics reveal that there were 43 per cent more A-level entrants taking Religious Studies this year than three years ago.
At GCSE level, statistics released showed that the full course, usually studied over two years, was taken this year by an extra 12,000 students - an 8.2 per cent rise to almost 160,000 students.
Canon John Hall, the Church of England’s Chief Education Officer, said that the statistics give weight to calls to ensure the inclusion of Religious Education in the Government’s proposed 14-19 framework.
“We must not allow the subject to be sidelined by those setting the curriculum for 14-19 year olds who take advantage of the new vocational study opportunities. Religious Education must be given due prominence in the compulsory elements of these students’ time in school, as the Government has recognised.”
Trace your family fortunes with Church of England’s latest web development
The Church of England has launched a new area on its website to assist the thousands of people currently trying to trace the branches of their family tree. The Church’s dedicated web area brings together links to a range of sources for tracing family histories – including the Lambeth Palace Library – and provides contact points for archives and repositories up and down the land.
“Local clergy are often approached by people seeking access to the church’s registers, but in many instances the records that they are looking for have been moved elsewhere. We hope that the new guidance will enable people to visit a single point for information on how the Church of England can help them research their ancestors’ past lives,” says Declan Kelly, Director of Libraries, Archives and Information Services for the Church of England.
The move reflects the huge popularity of research into family history, after more than 829,000 people visited The National Archive’s Family Records Centres in London and Kew in the last three years. Visit the new pages at: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/librariesandarchives/familyhistory/index.html
ChristianSat Guide helps explain Digital Satellite TV & Radio Would you like to receive Christian TV & Radio? Satellite offers 13 Christian TV & 10 Christian Radio channels that are all free. You can buy a system for a one-off cost with nothing further to pay.
Want to know more? There is a helpful new website that explains in simple terms how to choose a satellite system for Christian TV & Radio in the UK. There are many options, most that need no Sky contract.
This clear step by step guide can be found at www.ChristianSat.org.uk. If you have no internet access, then please send a stamped A4 size SAE with two extra unused stamps to help cover costs, to ChristianSat, 40 Rickford Hill, GUILDFORD, GU3 3PG.
Twelve Baskets – sharing resources for the good of all Twelve Baskets is a new website, supported by the Methodist Church, which allows people who produce PowerPoints, mini-movies, music, written word and images to sell and share their work quickly and easily at no cost to themselves.
For a small fee, others will be able to download material for projection, magazines, posters etc, without having to worry about any copyright restrictions. The originator will earn royalties, and 10% of profits will go to charity.
There is a vast wealth of resources sitting on people's computers that could be of great value to the whole Church. Twelve Baskets aims to build a vast and accessible online library, improving the quality of resources for worship, event publicity, and otherwise spreading the message of God.
The site went live in late August. Visit http://www.twelvebaskets.co.uk and start sharing your work.
Watch out, thieves, there’s prayer about! There are neighbourhood watch schemes, pub watch, shop watch, club watch – and now prayer-watch.
Prayer Watch is a scheme where local Christians pray for the local police – and the local criminals! It began in Skegness and Grantham when the police alerted the local churches of the danger to their property from local thieves. The churches responded by making sure everything was locked up, but then went a further step – and started praying for the victims and the offenders and the suspects.
Now Lincolnshire Police are considering whether to ‘roll out’ Prayer Watch, a scheme to harness the power of prayer to reform criminals and to stop crimes being committed.
A prayer watch scheme would involve churchwardens and others having access, through a PIN code, to information about local crimes and threats of crime on a police phone loop. They could then feed the information to their church people – for prayer.
In one church in Skegness, Prayer Watch is on the display board, along with the judo club and OAP club. “It shows the Church is a powerful part of the community,” says Inspector Andy McManus of the Lincolnshire Christian Police Association.
The director of the Christian Police Association, Don Axcell, says Prayer Watch is a brilliant idea. “I am a great believer in the power of prayer.”
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