Collective Worship
“You must live the faith to share it well” – Pope Francis
Collective Worship is at the heart of everything that goes on here at St. Joseph’s because we live and breathe our faith. We are unashamed in our love for Jesus and we are passionate about sharing our faith and worshipping with our fabulous staff, students and community.
The centrality and variety of Collective Worship
We believe that prayer should be vibrant, meaningful, reflective and engaging. Students begin every day with morning prayer during tutor time which follows this weekly set pattern of prayer:
- Monday – Gospel reflection prayer
- Tuesday – Silent prayer Tuesdays
- Wednesday – Student-led prayer (prayer warriors)
- Thursday – Creative/Musical prayer
- Friday – Cultural prayer
At the end of every day students end their day with a 2:58 prayer to reflect upon key issues in the world, key themes for the day or holy days of obligation. These prayers often include prayer star jumps, compliment prayers, musical prayers and prayer challenges to make students reflect and take their faith out into our wonderful communities.
Every RE lesson also begins with an exciting range of prayers such as musical praise, video reflections, prayer snowballs or formulaic prayers. We love to encourage the students to celebrate their faith and worship with passion. As St. Augustine said, for example, when we sing “it is like praying twice.” As a result, you will regularly hear our students singing their prayers throughout the corridors.
Liturgy and Worship
We are blessed to have such fantastic support from our parish clergy who regularly come in to celebrate Mass with our students. This ranges from Year 7 and Year 12 Welcome Masses, Advent Masses and Feast day Masses, through to leading us in Celebrations of the Word and leavers liturgies. We have even had a British Army Catholic Padre lead us in a Celebration of the Word in our school chapel. We were recently joined by Bishop Stephen Wright who celebrated Mass for the Feast day of St. Joseph the worker on 1st May 2024 and who is returning next year to celebrate the Feast day of St. Joseph on 19th March 2025.
Student-led worship – Prayer Warriors!
We ask our students to be prayer warriors by planning and delivering their own Celebration of the Word services. We have implemented a new structure to these, following the ‘we gather, we listen, we respond, we go forth’ structure and students enjoy working with their peers to plan meaningful acts of Collective Worship, celebrate their Celebration of the Word and then evaluate the impact it had upon them.
Every week we offer students the opportunity to attend prayer writing workshops during tutor time on a Thursday and Friday to support them in planning their own student-led prayer for form time the following Wednesday. Tutors have prayer rotas for which students will be our weekly prayer warriors and students use their gifts and talents to support their form groups in Wednesday worship.
The EVENT in-school retreat
From their Y6 transition onwards, students at St. Joseph’s have the opportunity to take part in our own Charismatic form of Collective Worship called the EVENT. Started in 2014, the EVENT is a retreat experience of faith, fun, dance, drama, fellowship and reflection. Students engage in liturgical dance (such as to ‘My Lighthouse’), faith-based challenges, candle-lit silent reflections, guest speakers and fun inter-active forms of prayer like prayer snowball fights.
We have shared this form of Collective Worship with other diocesan schools such as in Crook and Prudhoe with roadshow EVENTS. Furthermore, Jesus commanded his disciples to “go make disciples of all nations. To live this out, we recently led international visitors in Charismatic Collective Worship when we welcomed students from the Louisiana Baptist Church in America and students from the Netherlands to St. Joseph’s. As a school we are passionate about not just celebrating our faith and worshipping with our students and staff, but also with all those who visit.
Spirituality days
At the end of every term, we drop the curriculum and come together as house groups to celebrate spirituality days for Advent, Easter and the end of our yearly spiritual journey each summer. Each spirituality day sees students engage in a Celebration of the Word in St. James’ church, a spiritual development session, kinaesthetic quizzes, form time spiritual reflections, games and awards FLAME assemblies. These are fabulous opportunities to celebrate our faith, worship as a spiritual family and celebrate the amazing community that St. Joseph’s truly is.
The Chapel and multi-faith prayer room
We have recently renovated our school chapel which has beautiful pews, artwork of our house saints and serves as a lovely place for students to reflect, celebrate class Masses and Celebrations of the Word. We run Wednesday worship every Wednesday after school in here open to all staff and students. We are currently working with students of other faith traditions at St. Joseph’s to design and create a multi-faith prayer room where they can go to celebrate and worship also.
Sacramental preparation
We are firmly committed to the spiritual formation of all our students and work hard to support them in their sacramental preparation. RE and chaplaincy staff are trained catechists and help students to prepare for Baptism, if they are new to the faith, Holy Communion (this year we prepared two sixth formers to undertake their first Holy Communion at Lourdes) and the sacrament of Confirmation. We plan and lead the Confirmation preparation course for the parishes of Jarrow and take students on the national pilgrimage to CYMFED FLAME day as our Confirmation away day. It makes us really proud as a school to see students want to explore their faith further and journey further along their own spiritual path and we will support them any way we can with their preparation for this.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation, feast days and holy days of obligation
Because of the fantastic support from our parish clergy, we are able to offer the sacrament of reconciliation monthly for students and staff. Students are keen to go and speak with our priest and receive spiritual absolution to wipe the slate clean. We are grateful to our parish clergy for being so dedicated to the spiritual needs of both our staff and students. We also celebrate the feast of St. Joseph, our school patron saint, our house saints, feasts like All Saints and All Souls, Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, the feast day of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Month of Mary.
St. Joseph’s is a spiritual community built upon Christ’s love. We believe that first and foremost we are all ministers of Christ’s love first and educators second. When Blessed Edmund Rice had his vision of Jesus, he was told by Christ “the young people are the Church” and we truly believe that at St. Joseph’s. We are a community that aims to be Church. We will provide our students and staff with every opportunity possible to worship together and live and breathe their faith.
