My Work Experience Week – Izzy Oxley
Work Experience at St Martin’s Church
During my week at St Martin’s, I have learnt how interesting it is to be involved in children’s work, especially within the church. I’ve been a part of the church community for roughly 7 years; however, I never really paid much attention to the way the Bible was taught to me or how the church runs.
On my first day, I helped with the preschool Sunday School group. I was really intrigued as to how the Bible was taught to the children of the church. In my head, Sunday School was exactly like school – where you sit in silence and read out of books. However, the leaders made the preschool group feel like such a welcoming place; it was full of fun and laughter, and the children really enjoyed learning about the word of God. It was lovely to be able to experience that.
The next day, I was a part of the most boring bit of the job, the staff meeting. When I first walked into that meeting, I thought that I would have no idea what everyone was on about, and that I would be super confused the whole time. As the meeting went on, I realised that I could actually relate to what they were talking about. There was a bit of the meeting that really stuck with me – someone said that there is all of this positivity floating around and you don’t think twice about it, however when one bit of negativity floats by, you grasp onto it and focus on that, ignoring all of the positivity around you. I felt like that was an interesting point to talk about, and I think almost everyone can relate to that.
After the meeting I helped Hannah, the youth worker for the church, plan the activities for the children’s after school and holiday club, Blaze. The focus for the after-school club this week was ‘The Great Commission’ (Matthew 28:16-20), I really enjoyed doing my own research into the story and finding out where else in the Bible it relates to. I designed a poster for the upcoming Youth End of Term Party, I loved learning how to create the poster and use the software needed to make it.
On Tuesday, I went on the ABC (adults, babies and children) beach trip. Whilst there, I saw the community of supportive parents the Church has created over the years. It was honestly a lovely day, and you could tell the children and parents really enjoyed themselves. I was lucky enough that my mum and little brother go to ABC, and so I got to spend the day with them. Seeing my little brother’s enjoyment of the sea was my favourite part of that day.
Thursday was a little quieter. I spent a couple hours helping Hannah make resources for the Blaze Holiday Club. After that was St Martin’s Primary School year 6 leaver’s service. My other brother was part of that class, so it was especially nice for me to be able to be there. Seeing my old teachers was especially weird whilst doing my work experience, it was lovely though.
As soon as the service was over it was time for Blaze. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but similar to Preschool Sunday School, I really loved seeing the innovative ways the leaders found to teach the Bible to the children. It was especially nice to see something I had helped plan be put into action, I really enjoyed helping to plan Blaze and seeing it executed… it was honestly amazing! Helping with Blaze was my favourite part of the week so far.
Overall, doing my work experience at St Martin’s Church has been a brilliant opportunity. I’ve absolutely loved everything that I’ve been doing this week and it has given me some insight on what working for the church is really like – and the type of thing I want to do in the future. Throughout the week, I have been asking questions about things I could do with my future that relates to working with children within church settings. Hopefully, this opportunity is something that I can pursue in the future and that I am able to continue within the church one day.