I’m Amy Hayes a pioneer evangelist with Church Army in Selby, North Yorkshire. I work with the local primary school where we ran their first prayer space in December ’23. This was so well received that at Easter we ran a second prayer space and then a third in October based on the Inside Out movie! At the beginning of this December we were back again with a prayer space exploring the Christmas story. 

The Christmas prayer bus this year has been really special yet again. Our prayer space happens on the lower deck of a bus belonging to the school that is parked in the middle of the school playground.  We open at break and lunchtime and the children are free to come and go as they please.  It’s not a faith based school so there is no obligation for participation, however nearly every time we were open we had a queue of children waiting to get on. We had five different prayer activities based around the nativity story and focusing on themes of loneliness, Jesus being Emmanuel, fear, peace, gifting, world issues and joy. 

When we were signing in at reception the morning we were setting up, one child noticed my dancing Jesus Christmas jumper. She said, “Hey, that’s Jesus!” We then had a chat about why he was dancing. She then told me, “but he died” to which I responded, “Yea, but then three days later he came back to life again.”  When she told me that he had to fight the devil when he was dead, I asked her who she thought won and she said “Jesus because he has more energy than the devil. There’s no one more powerful than Jesus.” 

A couple of children told me how fantastic their first Holy Communion had been, one of which was two weeks prior to the prayer bus happening, and when one pupil was doing the ‘God with us’ prayer activity she announced, “God is always with us”, and then went and wrote that on an angel. 

The children also involved staff – one pupil went and got a Teaching Assistant in the playground and brought her onto the bus.  She brought her over to the manger and said, “Do you want to pray?  Look this is what you do.”  She then read the instructions to her. 

One of the things I have taken away from this particular prayer space is the importance of play for some children to engage. We had built a bit of a stable and there were a good few that just wanted to hold baby Jesus, or to tenderly wrap him up to stay warm, or to even pop him over their shoulder to burp him. Creating a space where they could sit on the hay, in the stable and interact with the baby in the manger enabled them to explore the story in a way that they probably haven’t before. And I wonder if that is potentially a more age appropriate way for younger children to engage with their own spirituality.