OPEN THE BOOK

Open the Book is a ministry resource developed by the Bible society where a trained team of church volunteers that are passionate about the stories in bible and want to share them with Primary School children. There are in excess of 12,000 volunteers over the UK making up nearly 3,000 teams reaching over 600,000 primary school children.    

We at Sussex Street are currently in 6 schools delivering assemblies. The pupils and teachers love the accessibility of these assemblies.

Open the Book is an incredibly simple and well developed resource that any one can pick up and use. All the assemblies are scripted and easy to deliver to both Keystage 1 & 2 separately or together weekly, bi-weekly or even once a month. The great thing about Open The Book is that everything apart from props and costumes are prepared for you. All the dialogue and stories are written on your behalf and the only skill you may need to posses is reading however. if you cant read you can still play a part in a team as one of the actors or prop hands. Teams normally consist of 4-5 everyone playing a part while also finding ways in which to include the children in the story one way or an other. 

Each assembly is broken down into the following elements;

• Introduction
• Story reading
• Conclusion
• Quiet moment of reflection
• Introduction to prayer
• Prayer​

All of this is done in 10 minutes. Therefore, if you have 1 morning or 1 hour available in the morning a week then I am sure you can see it is not a massive time commitment. 
​
The Bible society ran a survey in schools and surveyed families regarding their knowledge of Bible stories and the finding we concerning. Here are some of the findings.​

​In light of these stats we at Sussex Street Christian Centre hope that through Open The Book that seeds will be planted in hearts and minds of the children and even the teachers through our the simple scripted interactive and accessible assemblies. 

If you are interested in doing this ministry or creating your own in your own church. The bible society reserves the right to the material and required any team created to be trained by a certified Open the Book trainer which I am. Therefore, If you want to know more or interested in being part of our team here at Sussex Street or even build your own team for your church, please contact us at Sussex Street Christian Centre to answer any question you have. 

This is just one of the ministries we are part of as a church. Check out our other ministries on this website to find out more about what we do.

Children simply haven’t come across the stories before!

• A quarter of children have never read, seen or heard the story of Noah’s Ark (23%) or the Nativity (25%).
• More than half (54%) of children have never heard the story of Joseph and his coat of many colours.
• 43% of children have yet to hear, see or read about the Crucifixion.
• More than half have not heard, seen or read Moses parting the Red Sea (56%) or David and Goliath (57%).
• More than 60% of children have not read, seen or heard about the feeding of the 5,000 or the parable of the Good Samaritan.
• Three quarters (72%) of children have not seen, heard or read the story of Daniel in the lion’s den.

They don’t even know biblical stories!

• 1 in 5 children don’t know that the story of Noah’s Ark is from the Bible.
• A third (29%) don’t know that the Nativity story is part of the Bible.
• 41% don’t know that the story of David and Goliath is from the Bible.
• More than half (59%) don’t know the story of Jonah and the whale is from the Bible.