St Pauls Junior School

This afternoon I have been to a new school to do an assembly St Pauls Junior School in Barrow, a few months ago I did New Testament Bible Explorer there with the year 5 and 6 classes.  The schools Christian value for this term is Endurance, so after being introduced I pointed out to the children their Christian calendar on the wall was still pointing to Easter so I asked if they had had a good Easter Holiday and a good Easter weekend and if they had had chocolate for breakfast on Easter Sunday - this was because I wanted to link the events of Easter to my first song and continue with what happened after.  The song was Inright Outright and after it I did a very quick recap of the main events and fast forwarded to Pentecost which is 50 days after Easter Sunday and this year is 9th June.  Following Pentecost the followers of Jesus started to tell more and more people about Jesus despite being laughed at, punished, beaten etc.  Then I continued there was one man who had never seen Jesus, heard Jesus speak - he started to travel about telling loads of people about Jesus and I read from one of his letters about the punishments he had endured during his life, he also said that he would push on and finish the race set before him - I then linked to the upcoming Coniston to Barrow and asked who was doing it explaining that you need to look to the finish line and the pie and peas at the end.  I then let slip the name of the man in the bible - Paul, but today we know him as St Paul.  I asked if that name was familiar to the children - it's the name of our school came the reply.  So I continued by saying if it wasn't for Paul's endurance we wouldn't be here today in St Pauls School, up the road from St Pauls Church and we would not know about Jesus at all.  I linked in the song Be Happy as it says I'll run this race and I will never stop, I'll follow Jesus til' the day I drop.  After singing the song I said a short prayer.