“Never underestimate the power of prayer. One whisper to God can change everything”. – Pope Leo XIV
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.
Daily collective worship activities
Collective Worship is at the beating heart of everything that happens at St. Joseph’s and we endeavour to provide both students and staff with a wide range of opportunities to engage in prayer and liturgy. At St. Joseph’s we believe that prayer should be both the Alpha and Omega of everything that happens here, as such every day must begin and end with an opportunity for prayer.
Morning tutor time prayer
Every student across Key Stage 3, 4 and 5 begins their day with prayer during tutor time. These prayers are created and quality assured by the Prayer and Liturgy co-ordinator and are created to provide students with an innovative and meaningful variety of ways to grow spiritually and along their own faith journeys. The structure of daily prayer includes:
- Gospel reflection prayer Mondays: This provides students and staff to reflect on the Sunday’s Gospel reading. We use ‘Visio Divina’ to allow students the opportunity to watch and hear the Gospel before reflecting upon how it speaks to them and how they can apply the message of this week’s Gospel to their lives.
- Silent prayer Tuesdays: This provides students the opportunity for some stillness and quiet reflection. Often students meditate on orchestral music linked to a liturgical theme for the week.
- Prayer Warrior Wednesdays: Students in every form class have the opportunity to lead a prayer written by them on a Wednesday morning.
These are done on rotation so that all students across the year have the opportunity to be prayer warriors!
- Creative Prayer Curriculum Thursdays: Inspired by the new Prayer and Liturgy directory (September 2025) students engage in creatively exploring key forms of Catholic prayer, we explore how Catholic saints have placed their faith into action, we look at a variety of traditional and contemporary expressions of worship and styles of prayer and liturgy. Every year group focuses upon a different prayer, saint or style of worship every Thursday which means we have 7 different expressions of worship each Thursday morning, due to the nature of this spiral prayer and liturgy curriculum.
- Cultural Prayer Fridays: On a Friday we explore a faith story, faith news article or faith vocation testimony from across the world and explore how we can be inspired by this in our daily lives. In Cultural Prayer Fridays we look at everything from Christian Wrestling Churches to Beat Boxing Catholic nuns. We also explore, when they occur, the faith festivals from other faith traditions including Ramadan, Chanukah, Diwali and Bandi Chor Divas.
The daily 2:58 prayer
To conclude our day we always end with our 2:58 prayer. This is created and quality assured by our Prayer and Liturgy co-ordinator and students reflect upon teachings from the Saints and the Pope, through to exciting international days, to even Prayer Star Jumps for our own prayer intentions. We believe every student should start and end the day in a state of grace.
Collective Worship Assemblies
One day per week every student attends a Collective Worship Assembly. The day differs depending upon whether the week is a House assembly week or a Year group assembly week however this ensures that all students still have the opportunity to begin with prayer and liturgy. Collective Worship assemblies are based around topical and liturgical themes and are structured using the diocesan format of:
- We Gather: Gathering in quiet and musical reflection and prayer
- We listen: A reading from Holy Scripture
- We reflect: Linked to the scripture we reflect on the theme for the assembly.
- We go forth: Our Mission for the week ahead inspired by our scripture.
Weekly collective worship activities
“Be active, awake and adoring” – Pope Leo XIV on the importance of engaging in Collective Worship
At St. Joseph’s we believe that in addition to daily acts of collective worship, students should have the opportunity to engage in a wide range of traditional and contemporary opportunities for wider-collective worship each week including opportunity to receive the Eucharist which truly is the source and summit of our faith:
- Tuesday morning Parish Mass at St. James’ RC church: Every Tuesday morning a different class on rotation will attend and take leadership of the Parish Mass with the parishioners. Celebrated by Fr. Simon Weymes, our students prepare art work offerings, cards for the parishioners and practice the readings in advance of leading the Liturgy of the Word for the parish Mass. Students then reflect upon how the experience of Mass impacts them.
- Tuesday break-time Silent Adoration: Every Tuesday between 11-11:15am all students and staff have the opportunity to attend Silent Adoration in the chapel. This gives students and staff a moment of peace in the busyness of the school week to offer their own prayers and silent intentions in candle-light and stillness.
- Funky Friday Fellowship: Before school every Friday morning, students and staff come together to worship in a very contemporary and energetic style. We engage in liturgical dances and musical praise such as our school Anthem ‘My Lighthouse’, ‘Shine Jesus Shine’ and the ‘Christian Cha-Cha Slide’, we listen to the Word, we pray together through prayer snowballs and we have faith-based fun. Funky Friday Fellowship is about faith, fellowship and fun.