Blessing of the School Backpacks
Blessing of the Sunday School Rooms and Supplies
These two ideas are similar and there's no reason you can't do both or combine them.
- Nothing symbolizes a student's expectations for the new school year better than the bag or backpack that he or she will carry with her every day. Consider inviting the students to bring their backpacks to worship before the start of a new school year, and have the congregation pray for their learning as well as their safety in the coming year. (Don't forget to pray for the teachers and administrators, too!)
- Then... "piggyback" on the backpack theme with a discussion and blessing of the supplies, rooms, teachers, and students about to start a new season of learning in our Sunday School. Compare the importance of learning God's Word and God's Values with learning math and reading. They're all important and a person is incomplete without them.
Bless the teachers. Bless the supplies. Bless the Rooms, Bless the kids
This "blessing" can be done in worship, or could be done as a "parade" after worship through the rooms and end up in Fellowship Hall for cake. The pastor could lead this parade of blessing by sprinkling baptismal water in each room and on the marchers as a symbol of our promise to raise up children in the way they should go. You could even include a little bit of incense or the smell of fresh baked bread saying that our brain associates good smells with good places and memories and we pray that learning here will be a delight to the Holy Spirit and to our kids!
Planning for a Blessing of the Backpacks and Supplies
Some things you can do...
- Begin announcing several weeks in advance so that students will bring their backpacks to worship on a specific Sunday. (Those who forget can still go to the front of the sanctuary to be blessed with the other children.)
- Give the children a bag tag or some sort as a physical reminder of the congregations' support and prayers for them as well as God's presence with them throughout the school year. You may also choose to supply each student with something from your church, like a church pen, to remind them of their church when they're in school.
- Depending on your congregation's demographics, you may want to consider supplying your students with backpacks already loaded with supplies. Or collect backpacks and pray over them, and donate them to the local food bank or some other community organization that supports families having trouble making ends meet.
- Include the Great Commission in your liturgy as a reminder to students (and the congregation) that they are called to GO into the world in Jesus' name with healing and love, and that world includes their school world.
- Include a traditional or contemporary Christian song that will enliven and inspire the congregation and kids to GO into the world, knowing that Jesus is with them always, as promised. Micah Tyler's "Never Been a Moment" (that I was not loved by you) is a good place to start.
An Offering of Learning Supplies
This idea is based on the "Birthday presents for the church" idea found in our Pentecost ideas forum. The congregation buys supplies for the Sunday School by picking a 'tag' off of a board or tree and then bringing it wrapped in newspaper to a certain Sunday service. The kids in the children's sermon unwrap the gifts and the pastor makes some encouraging comments about each gift to drum up excitement for the impending restart or recommitment to Sunday School.
Construction paper, markers, glue, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, Bibles, Bible maps, new toys for the nursery, a rug, ---whatever supplies your program needs. You can even put a teacher in a gift box that the kids unwrap!
The kids offer their time and promise their best learning attitude.
Here are some sample prayers and liturgies from other churches and ministries to help you write your own:
- Blessing Of The Backpacks: A Prayer For The Start Of School includes a responsive reading introducing the prayer.
- Backpack Blessings from Ministry Matters includes suggested prayers for teachers and for donated backpacks, too.
- Backpack Blessing! from the SALT Team suggests having the congregants lift their hands in the traditional posture of bestowing a blessing.
- Blessing Backpacks: Prayer and Resources from Building Faith includes suggestions for physical objects students can put on or in their backpacks as a physical reminder of the prayers of the people.
- Backpack Blessings from NW Synod of Wisconsin Resource Center includes a suggested children's sermon that brings the children forward to hear about vocation before they are prayed over.
- Blessing of the Backpacks: A Resource for Worship includes a litany, and the prayer includes Sunday school teachers.
