In the Village of Barnstable, MA 02630

Contact us: 508-362-3977

3055 Main Street P.O. Box 395

stmary@cape.com

Change in Church School Schedule:

No Church School on Joy Mass Sundays (Two this month: January 8 and January 29, 2012)

Church School starts at 9:45 a.m. on all other Sundays.

Family Ministry at St. Mary's

There are so many exciting opportunities for families and children here at St. Mary’s from our Church School programs which are based on Godly Play, Youth Group for the older children, Joy Mass for everyone, family nights, and so much more.

Please view the following to see what we have to offer you and your family. Church School starts on Sunday, September 18, we hope to see you there!

Nursery Care is available for infants and toddlers, 0-3 years old. Please find Jerrica O'Donaghue, our Nursery Staff Attendant,in the St. Jude's room for nursery care during the 10- o'clock service. Please sign up with Jerrica to assist in the nursery on a rotating basis. She welcomes the assistance of youth and adult care givers. Our Episcopal Church guidelines request that there be two caregivers with children during services, meetings and functions.

Church School & Godly Play
Children's Joy Mass
Saint Mary's Children's Event Photos

Church School and Godly Play

Styles of learning vary as much as creative gifts. Some people learn most effectively when they see information written down, others when they hear it. Some people are kinetic; they need to move their bodies to learn. Some learn most effectively by working in small groups, others by concentrating on their own. There is no one proper way to learn; there are only individual styles of learning. Godly Play respects those differences.

In Godly Play, our Sunday school program for children ages 4-11 at 9:45 a.m. we tell stories with multi-sensory materials to appeal to a broad range of learning styles: auditory, because the story is spoken our loud; visual, because the handmade wooden figures represent what is happening in the story; kinesthetic, because the storyteller moves the materials around. Later, any child who wishes to learn to tell the story can respond in the same style.

In the “response time,” those children who work best together can pair off or form groups to work on creative projects. Those who work best alone have the time and space to concentrate on projects by themselves.

We gather the children in a circle for the storytelling, and at the end for a feast, because they thereby learn about being in community and working together. Everything we do in Godly Play contributes to learning. To learn more about Godly Play and how to register a child you know in our Sunday school, call 508-362-3977.

Children's Joy Mass (4th Sunday of each month at 10:30 a.m. in the Parish Hall)

There is a difference between "happiness" and "joy" Happiness might be be a big bowl of vanilla ice cream at the end of the day or your favorite sports team winning, or getting that iPod you've always wanted. Joy, on the other hand, is very different. 

Joy denotes that inner sense that some measure of life being lived in rhythm with God. It can be born of quietly performing some act of anonymous kindness that pleases God’s heart of love.  It can be found in simply walking through the garden at Saint Mary’s and giving thanks to God for all the splendor of creation.  Joy presents itself during a particularly good sermon or in the course of a well rehearsed and energetically offered Sunday morning choir anthem. Joy— unlike happiness, which is born most often of chasing after things and tactile pleasures — is about living life in concert with God and the things of God. 

Children, in their wonder and purity, have a great capacity for joy.  They are far less apt to be enfolded in cynicisms, frosty doubts, worry, or the fear of being embarrassed by what someone else may be thinking.  In a most wonderful way they can be so open to their need for joy and are willing to run after it with an energy and sense of abandonment rarely seen in their adult contemporaries. 

At Saint Mary's, on the fourth Sunday of each month at 10:30 am in the Parish Hall, our Children's Joy Mass seeks to allow young children to tap deeply into the joy we can all know in our relationship to God. The Joy Mass is designed for young children ages five to seven but is open to children of all ages and those who love them. The Joy Mass Team, the Rev. Mark Anschutz and youth of the parish, promise that the music is both sing-able and meaningul, the gospel dynamic, the prayers accessible, and the Eucharist nourishing.

Dr. Maria Montessori, the acclaimed educator and devout Christian, said that “joy is the indicator of interior growth, just as an increase in weight is an indication of bodily growth.”  At Saint Mary’s Church we recognize that we have a great responsibility to nurture that kind of interior growth, that joy in the lives of those children God has entrusted to us. The Joy Mass seeks to be one of the many ways in which we seek meet that challenge, that responsibility. Please join us!

St. Mary's Children's Event Photos

*You will be leaving St. Mary's website to view these photos*