Who is Blaze?

Blaze the Bee helps children and families in congregations right across PCI explore how God is at work in the world and what it means for them to be a global disciple, doing what they can to play their part in God’s global mission.

This includes learning about, and praying for, global mission workers, God’s church around the world and a Christian approach to big issues like creation care. 

Each congregation has been provided with a Blaze character (cuddly toy) for use in children’s addresses and other activities such as Sunday school or uniformed organisations. You will know best where Blaze fits and will have most impact in the particular shape of your congregation’s children’s ministry.

Read Ruth Bromley's blog Introducing Blaze the Bee to find out more.

2024 Blaze Prayer Calendar

Blaze has been helping us to learn about what it means to be a global disciple. This year we want to encourage children, leaders and families to think about how we can pray for global mission around the world.

Blaze has prayer ideas for our global mission workers in PCI. Each month, a new global mission worker will be highlighted and we will share prayer points from them to help children, families and the whole congregation to pray for the work they are involved in.

The ideas are on a downloadable calendar to distribute to everyone in your congregation. There are also PowerPoint slides to use in announcements and/or all-age slots in church.

Pray for us. Pray that God will give us an opportunity to tell people his message. Pray that we can preach the secret truth that God has made known about Christ. Colossians 4:3 ICB

May 2024 Prayer Points

Diane Cusick has been the early childhood development co-ordinator with Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) Synod of Zambia, since May 2016 and her responsibilities include co-ordinating training activities in early childhood development for primary and community schools and church early childhood development centres.

Diane assists early childhood development teachers to use the Zambian Early Childhood Syllabus using a play based approach to learning, mainly with locally available materials (including rubbish). She trains teachers during school holidays (three times a year), and visits them in the classroom during terms to guide and mentor them, and introduce new activities to the children. Diane also trains church leaders and committees to help them in their understanding of early childhood development.

Prayer points:

• Pray for the children in our Early Childhood centres. They are between 3 and 6 years old and they love coming to the centres to play with their friends, and to learn lots of things. They especially love learning Bible verses, singing and learning all about Jesus. They learn how to love, how to share, and how to forgive each other.
• Pray for the children in Mazabuka Early Childhood centre. They meet in a church building and they use 'rubbish' for toys. Currently they are building toilets for this centre as there were none for the children, and there are usually 60 - 70 children attending every day! Pray that the toilets will be built quickly so that children will not get sick because of poor hygiene.
• Pray for Diane as she is currently in Northern Ireland because of a health problem. Pray that she will be able to see doctors soon and get back to Zambia quickly so that she can get back to her work teaching the teachers of the children in the Early Childhood Centres.

Creating a buzz …

We will regularly be making materials and resources available be used in conjunction with the Blaze character. They will be made available at several times throughout the year, offering simple and readily usable outlines to give a child-friendly window on a variety of aspects of global mission.

To download our resources to introduce Blaze as a global disciple in your children’s ministry check the downloads section in the right hand menu.

Digital Dispatches

When Blaze travels to visit one of PCI’s global mission workers, they record a digital dispatch to document the visit. These digital dispatches also come with a children’s address idea, children’s ministry extension activities and ideas for families to do together at home.

You can watch the latest dispatch below and accompanying resources can be found in the downloads section.

Other Dispatches

All the previous dispatches can be found here on our Vimeo channel and you can download the accompanying resources below.

Summer in Nepal with Helen Johnston (2023): Children's Address; Children's Activity Ideas; Ideas for Families; Photos for Children's Activities.

Spring in Romania with Rosie Kennedy (2023): Children's Address; Children's Activity Ideas; Ideas for Families.

Harvest in Kenya with Naomi Leremore (2022): Children's Address; Children's Activity Ideas; Ideas for Families.