November - Open the Book at Oakwood School

Not to be confused with our Thursday Bible Study, ‘Open the Book’ is a national charity that provides school friendly materials to enable members of local churches to go into primary schools and share the story of the Bible with the children. Open The Book offers primary school children an opportunity to hear the major Bible stories, presented chronologically, during one school year. It is a free service given to each school by a team of Christians from local churches, who present a series of stories. Each presentation takes a maximum of ten minutes and can be incorporated into a wider school assembly, or can stand alone.

All the Year One stories are taken from The Lion Storyteller Bible written by Bob Hartman, and give an overview of the Bible from Creation to the Ascension. There is a further two years of themed material for those schools (and teams) that wish to continue. Open The Book fulfils both OFSTED and SIAS (Church School Inspection) requirements for Collective Worship, and has been successfully used in a multi-faith context.

Open The Book started in Bedford in 1999 where a group of Christians first started presenting Bible stories in school assemblies. Word reached other schools and areas and so grew from a local initiative into a national enterprise. In Gloucestershire Open The Book has grown from six teams in 2001 to over 160 teams in 2009 – that’s more than 1000 local volunteers. Phil Arnold, Jean Gregory and I became involved as part of Hope ’09 as a way of working together with St Michael’s.

Money raised helps to buy the books we use and to help with props and costumes. We also need funding to train other teams. As well as this month’s collections you are warmly invited to spend money on coffee and goodies at the URC in Prestbury from 10 – 12 on Saturday 20th November. If you really want to know what Open The Book is like come to church on the morning of 21st November.

Open the Book is a registered charity, number 1120425

Mary Michael