Since 1997 REinspired has been bringing Christian RE to life through partnership with local schools and churches
25th Year Anniversary
REinspired is broad and inclusive, celebrating the spectrum of Christian belief and practice.
Our Values
- Our Faith. We are a Christian organisation. All that we do and the way we do it, is rooted in our understanding and experience of the love of God in our lives. All staff, Trustees and volunteers have a living faith and are supported by their own Church.
- Education. We value the state educational system in which pupils are encouraged to learn about religion with a sense of wonder, and to form their own world view. We recognise that the basis of our invitation into school is for education and not evangelism.
- Partnership. We work with churches, schools and others to develop mutually beneficial and lasting relationships.
- Creativity. God is creative and has made us so too. Within the church community there is an enormous amount of creative talent. We see it in communicating the Gospel, in children’s ministries, in worship and in prayer. We seek to honour and make good use of the exciting creative gifts from across the church community.
- Diversity. We respect and value the diversity that exists within the Christian faith and between faiths. We are open to working with all Christian denominations and with people of other faiths who share our vision and values.
- Growth. As we seek to help our children learn, we ourselves are determined to learn from them and our partners, so we can better understand what it means to practise our faith in Britain in the 21st century.
- Inclusivity. Learning about and from Christianity should be accessible to all pupils, regardless of their faith background or any special educational needs.
Our background and future
Our background – Where we came from
When we started out in East Reading in 1997 we were simply responding to a call for help from one local primary school. It was an opportunity we could not ignore – at that point we had no idea where it would lead.
We soon saw how well received our sessions were by teachers and pupils. As other schools became interested our vision grew and by 2005 REinspired was born.
Word spread, and by 2019, pre pandemic, we were delighted to be working each year with every child, in every school, every year. This covered 15 schools (a mix of primary and secondary) – totalling over 200 sessions and 16,500 encounters with children and young people each year.
Our purpose then and now is to support and enable churches to work together, to bring the Christian element of the RE syllabus to life for our schools and to support the spiritual development of their pupils.
Schools tell us that the REinspired sessions are creative, engaging and fun. The children feel safe and valued with us and we have often heard a teacher remark on how a quiet child contributes more in our sessions than they normally see in the classroom. Likewise the fast moving, varied nature of the session material helps a child with a short attention span become engrossed in the activity.
Our Vision
As clergy, school staff and volunteers from our area moved to different geographical locations, we started to receive requests to support the spread of REinspired into their new areas. To date this has led to 9 new satellite projects adopting the REinspired model across southern England, Wales and the Channel Islands.
We are now reconfiguring our approach to make setting up a new project more straightforward, utilising the experience gained from online work done over the pandemic. Through this we aim to build a network of like-minded churches committed to developing partnerships with their local schools to support their Religious Education.
My hope and prayer is that many churches will catch this vision, engage with their local schools and offer a dynamic encounter with living Christian faith.
A calm and well resourced session with the children engaged and asking questions.
REinspired are true to their vision ‘To see all school pupils’ spiritual development and religious education enhanced by creative engagement with people of faith in an educational framework’. They have ably supported our children to explore religious education in greater depth.
The team from REinspired also gives our children the opportunity to engage with local religious role models and in so doing to appreciate what it means to be part of a community caring for one another. This aspect of their work would be impossible to recreate solely within classrooms and is a key benefit of our on-going partnership with REinspired.”