FAQs

We believe that God created all people to be in relationship with him and each other. If we never worship as a whole family of God, then we miss out on valuable opportunities to learn from each other and to grow in faith. For example, our youngest children benefit enormously from the wisdom and experience of those more mature, while many adults can learn from the freedom our children bring in their worship.

We like our chairs in a horseshoe shape, with blankets and cushions in the middle. This helps us feel connected to the rest of the congregation. However, we know this doesn’t work in all church buildings, so experiment to find a layout that works for you. We suggest you try to include a variety of seating options if you can. In our experience, our children focus better on the service when they aren’t constrained by a chair that’s too big for them. For more information, see our Environment section.

No! ENCOUNTER came out of a need to provide good quality all-together worship at our home church, but the structure can be adapted to work in an adult-only congregation. We suggest removing the activity, then adding a brief discussion time after the Bible reading. Encourage your congregation to break into small groups to share their thoughts on the passage. For example, in our service on Psalm 139, we suggest an activity about the human body. For a discussion, questions could include What stands out from the Bible reading? What does it say about God? What does it say about you?

The structure we suggest is one that we have tried and tested with good results in our home church. However, we recognise that it maybe won’t work for all contexts. If you need to change the order to make it work better for tour church, go for it! But make sure to keep it consistent in each ENCOUNTER service you offer, and to make sure your visual timetable matches your altered structure.

We find not. The elements on the visual timetable are deliberately vague to allow for freedom. For example, using “sing” rather than “song” gives the opportunity to have one song, or three. “Activity” can be absolutely anything that helps introduce the theme, from a drama to a game. It can even be used to incorporate a second reading or to tell the story in a different way.

No, as long as you have someone (or a team) willing to lead. All of our services have a full talk available to download, which can be delivered by anyone who is willing. Depending on your church, you may need to seek permission from your minister first.

The honest answer is, we can’t always manage this. However, we believe that children of any age can have a relationship with God and part of that is providing opportunities for them to be present in worship. We try to provide ways that our youngest children can engage:

• Having ribbons/flags and instruments available can help them join in with sung worship.
• Making sure one of our response options is more sensory or geared towards being engaging for our youngest children.
• Giving freedom to move around both through the layout of our space and the structure of the service.
• Using visual aids to help with understanding the Bible story and with praying. Rachael’s daughter is 2 (at the time of writing) and chooses from images on our prayer booklets for the things she wants to pray about.

What we don’t do is provide toys for our littlest children to play with during the service. We find that this increases their distraction, is more distracting to older children (and adults!) and actually reduces their engagement in the service. Both Rachael and Katy currently have toddlers, and Rachael’s eldest has attended ENCOUNTER his whole life; all three engage in their own way without the need to play with toys.

A lot of this is to do with the language we choose. We don’t “dumb down” the content to make it “child-friendly.” Rather, we pitch it at a “new Christian” level, avoiding jargon and making sure that the language used is understandable. By doing this, we can still offer both challenge and assurance where needed, but in a way that all people can understand.

The variety of response options also helps to enable this. Some will naturally offer more challenge (e.g. journal sheets with probing questions) while others may be simpler.

Not everyone attending an ENCOUNTER service will benefit equally from each element of the service, just as in any other service. However, there should be something in each service that everyone can engage with.

One thing we have learnt is that different people worship in different ways. Some will engage best through WORD (spoken or written), others through ACTIONS (physical response, way of life), EMOTIONS (personal relationships, music or dance) or SYMBOLS (God seen in nature, meditation, silence). We aim to offer elements of all these in our services so that we can help everyone to take part in a meaningful way.

Of course, children and adults bring different needs and experience to worship. Structuring the service as we do, along with providing resources like the visual timetable and bingo, helps our younger children engage with elements that would traditionally seem more “adult.” However, we also consciously try to include a song our children will know (sometimes with actions, but not always) and consider how they may take part in songs they don’t know. This may be through instruments and dance, but it may be that we pick just a chorus that is repetitive and add some sign language to it.

Our favourite way of leading prayer is actually not to pray from the front! We like to encourage people to form small groups and then we will guide them through the A TSP model. Alongside this, we have some “prayer prompt” images on the screen and available in small booklets to give people an idea. At the end of each section, we sum up with a very brief prayer before leading people onto the next. One reason we like this is that we now see (and hear) people praying together, but it also gives a model of prayer that can be used easily by families in the home.

If we don’t pray this way, we may include more physical ways of praying. For example, using parts of our body, blowing bubbles as a way of confession or even using sweets like Skittles to prompt our prayers. Many of these ideas can be found using the creative prayer tag on our Service Resources pages.

Not at all. If you want to use the structure to form your own services, feel free. The beauty of ENCOUNTER is how adaptable it is. Start with the visual timetable and follow the structure. A blank order of service is available to download here.

We are making all our resources available at no cost. However, we are always grateful for any donations which will allow us to continue maintaining the website so we can keep it going. Donations can be made safely and securely through PayPal (no account needed).

Of course! We are passionate about helping churches come together to worship God. Please see our Training page for more information.

We suggest getting a small team together to lead your ENCOUNTER services. Take a look at the Getting Started page, then head to the Service Resources section to pick a service. If you need any support, just send an email and we will do our best to help.