Our church offers Echo the Story for children and youth in Upper Elementary – Middle School
Meets twice a month on Sunday mornings during Celebration
Click Here for Spring 2024 Schedule
Echo the Story engages biblical storytelling, creative reflection, and peer dialogue to help participants discover spiritual meaning and identity through narrative. Echo the Story allows children to build on what they have learned in Godly Play, as they are invited to go deeper with their wondering.
The program is designed for children & youth ages 9-13 who are ready to engage in more in-depth story reflection and peer conversation. Echo the Story complements Godly Play, and many children who are still in elementary school choose to attend Echo the Story on the Sundays when we meet, and Godly Play on alternate Sundays.
The session begins with an introduction to help us prepare for the story, followed by a time of storytelling. The biblical story for the day is shared twice, allowing for both imaginative listening and an opportunity to write down observations and questions.
Participants then get to engage in guided individual creative work that helps them process those observations and questions. There is always a drawing option, a creative writing option, and on option to continue working on open written reflection.
Individual listening, observation, and creative work leads us into a time of communal peer-led discussion. The discussion time is the heart of Echo the Story, where children & youth “echo” the story back to each other through sharing their observations, reflections, and questions. It is a rich time that allows for spiritual meaning-making without settling on a single answers to complex questions.
We close our time together with a time of prayer and sending.
Echo the Story is a curriculum designed by youth pastor Michael Novelli and published by Sparkhouse.