Spirit Filled Children’s Liturgy of the Word manual

I’ve been putting a book together over the last few years while training children’s liturgists in my parish. I did this because I couldn’t find a helpful handbook on how to facilitate Children’s charismatic liturgies. I had bought what was available, but none of the books lived up to their titles.

Then I took advantage of a rushed Christmas free publishing initiative run by youwriteon.com so that I could get the book between shiny covers to give our parish team of children’s liturgists and to show people like you and potential publishers. I have acknowledged sources where applicable, such as Clare Fernandez from a workshop she ran at Celebrate. I would appreciate any comments you may have. (Are there any Goodnews readers involved in children’s liturgy who would be interested in seeing the book and feeding back to Fiona? Ed. note) Although the book has an ISBN and is on Amazon etc I haven’t put a table of contents yet. I regard this as a first draft.

If you have ever been asked to join or run a ministry team (e.g., catechetical or liturgical) in your parish and have searched in vain for a handbook of practical ideas to get you started, then it is likely that you have ended up writing your own course or framework.
If you have done this, it might be helpful to publish what you’ve written in order to make it available to others, particularly others in Renewal, to use and to add suggestions to based on their own experience.
www.youwriteon.com , an Arts Council-funded peer review site and publisher, published The Spirit-filled Children’s Liturgy of the Word for free and they send me copies for £2.50 each plus p&p when I need them (just half the RRP of £4.99). I chose to pay £39.99 for an ISBN and to have the handbook put on Amazon and other outlets, but this is optional. If you email ywoandlpfreepublishing@googlemail.com they’ll tell you about their latest free publishing offers. Write to: Fiona Cullen-Skowronski, 28 Collier Road, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 3JR Tel: 01424 436 292 email: catholic.english@tiscali.co.uk

“God’s Busy Week”

Roisin Hickey and Kathleen Prior, two Catholic primary school teachers from Derry, have produced some lively and colourful children’s religious education books with big bright illustrations. “God’s Busy Week” tells the Creation story, “My Best Friend” tells about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and “Holy Spirit Hero”, explains about the work of the Holy Spirit.

Highly recommended by various RE diocesan advisers including Fr Martin O’Hagan, one of the three priests involved in the best selling CD “The Priests,” the books, which are published by Chosen Children’s Books, retail at £3.99 each. For further details contact Roisin Hickey, Chosen Children’s Books, 11 Cromlech Pk, Portstewart, Co Londonderry, BT55 7QD www.chosenchildrensbooks.com tel 02870 834412

Westminster Cathedral Prayer Group hosts first Charismatic mass for travellers' Community

When I was at New Dawn last year I met Margaret Doran from the Travellers’ community. As a result I was inspired by the Holy Spirit to devote one of our monthly healing Masses for the travellers’ community and send out special invitations to them welcoming them to come and be with us. This happened on 5th December 2008. It was a wonderful occasion, and as well as our usual members, about 100 of the travellers and their families came, including their young people and men folk. The young people did the readings and Margaret sang a beautiful song she had specially composed.

We were all very impressed by the numbers that went to confession, which put us to shame. Fr Bill Keogh gave a lovely sermon and prayed for them as a community and we also received a lot of support from our other priests, Fr Ephraim, Fr David Gummett and Fr Francis Conway. It was such a success that we have decided to make it an annual event. Kate Moir, leader of Westminster Cathedral Hall Prayer Group, London.