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- Get in plenty of pizza and coke and listen to the young people!
- Give everyone a large sheet of paper and a marker pen. Ask them to draw a chart of their family (no names, just labels e.g. brother, step-dad, auntie, dog etc) Collect them up and display them all on the wall or floor where everyone can see them. Chat about what you notice about the family charts, the similarities and differences etc. Are there times when family life is difficult, or really good? Does church help? Could it? You might be able to arrange the charts and add others to show how your church functions at the moment, or how it could be, e.g. a family of families.
- Sometimes young people do not want to talk about their own family but prefer to talk about families in TV soap programmes such as 'The Simpsons' or 'Eastenders' because it is less personal. Video a couple of clips from current programmes showing family life and use them to promote discussion. For example, in 2004 the Diocese of Clifton asked young people to think of a fictional family on TV and say if they thought they were a happy family and if so why.
- Display the sentence: This parish is like a family. Brainstorm things that are good about that (e.g. it feels like home), and things that are bad (e.g. the priest's like my dad; he never washes up the coffee cups afterwards.) All sorts of issues around the young people's own families and church life may emerge.
- You could use the same sentence as above, but brainstorm all the ways in which the statement is true, and all the ways it isn't. The sheet "I have a dream..." could be used to record desires for change.
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