This letter can be used if you want to let families in your church know that you will be using Friends and Heroes DVDs and teaching material in your normal Sunday/Sabbath school. It also encourages parents to invite children from their local community, as well as their own children, to come along.  An invitation card has also been designed (see below) which can be handed out to families, inviting them to come along on Sunday morning. The letter is in Word format so you can make changes to the document and add your contact details before sending it out.

download

This letter has been designed for churches who want to run a Friends and Heroes event, e.g. after school club, party, evening youth club etc. and can be used to invite folk in the local community who are not already connected with your church. As with the Sunday/Sabbath School invitation letter, this letter has been created in Word format so that changes can be made to the document and your contact details added.

download

The poster has been designed so that it can be used for events that include episodes from any of the three Friends and Heroes series. There is space to customise the poster with the event details – time, when, where, contact details etc. Unfortunately it is not possible to save the event/contact details that you type onto the poster to print later, so remember to print out as many posters as you need before you close the document.

download

The invitation design matches the poster and again there is space to customise the invitation with the event details – time, when, where, contact details etc. Unfortunately it is not possible to save the event/contact details that you type onto the invitation, so remember to print out as many invitations as you need before you close the document. This invitation can be used to invite children and adults from the local community to any Friends and Heroes event that you are organising.

download

We know that you may not have email addresses for children you wish to contact but we have included an email template for you to use if you feel it is suitable for your situation. When you have downloaded the ZIP file, open it and click on the MSG file it contains. This will open your email editor where you can make the changes needed. Then simply cut-and-paste the email into your usual email client and send to to all the contacts you wish to invite.

download

Although these cards are not directly linked to inviting children to a Friends and Heroes event, they do encourage children to look at our award-winning children’s website, www.friendsandheroes.tv. This website includes puzzles, quizzes, Bible stories, information on Bible characters and much more.

download

At an exhibition recently, we met a user of our Bible lessons who was about to finish Series 3 and wanted some way to mark that event with the children. We suggested that we create a certificate which could be given to the children to recognise their achievement. The final episode of Series 3 provides a good opportunity to create an evangelistic appeal for the children to make a decision about Jesus, as Portia had to do in that episode.  So we have created a special version of the certificate to give those children who respond - see below.

Standard certificate

Jesus our saviour certificate

We hope you find these images helpful if you are writing about Friends and Heroes in your newsletter or magazine - they are free to use - please simply add 'Images © Friends and Heroes Ltd'.

Macky; Portia; Pharaoh

The text below can be used as a basis to your article, you are free to modify as you please.

Friends and Heroes - Bible stories on TV

Friends and Heroes, an adventure series for children featuring amazing computer-generated animated Bible stories, was first broadcast on the BBC's CBBC channel in March 2007 and then aired on the BBC2 terrestrial television channel during the Autumn of 2007. 

Adventures and Values

Based in a fascinating and turbulent period of history, 69-71 AD, Friends and Heroes places Bible stories in a vivid historical context. It uses animated adventure stories to introduce a new generation of children, whatever their faith, to the stories of the Old and New Testaments in an appealing, fresh and memorable way. Children love the stories: "Friends and Heroes rocks!" said one recent e-mail. Boys are strongly attracted by the central male characters, the danger and the exciting action! This approach - of setting Bible stories in living contexts amongst the people who kept them alive, by passing them on ‘down the line’ to children - runs throughout the series as a constant motif.

Friends and Heroes is the tale of two young people - Macky and Portia - whose idealism and friendship leads them across the ancient world, from the fabled Egyptian port of Alexandria, to the besieged city of Jerusalem and finally, to the very heart of the Empire: Rome. As they fight for justice and even survival against the might of the Roman Empire, they become friends and then, in turn, heroes. Like our heroes, children will be empowered by what they see and hear, as they share the courage and compassion, the everyday dangers faced by Macky and his friends.

Entertainment and Education

The series was part of the BBC's educational programming on BBC2 and appealed to many schools which regularly use the educational resources provided by BBC Schools. All three Series are available as multi-language DVDs which will play all over the world - see below for details.

Fascinating Children's Website

The Friends and Heroes children's website is full of fascinating info, video clips, puzzles and activities at www.friendsandheroes.tv. Children will find Bible stories to read or listen to, biographies of many characters including some Biblical characters, downloads, games and great material to support projects on the Roman and Biblical periods of history too!

DVDs released

All three series are available as individual DVDs or as Series Packs. DVDs have fully-dramatised soundtracks in the following languages: English; Arabic; Chinese (Mandarin); French; German; Hindi/Urdu; Korean; Portuguese (Brazilian); Russian and Spanish (South American) with sub-titles in English for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and all the other languages listed, plus Audio Description in English - making Friends and Heroes available to a wide audience. Visit www.friendsandheroes.com/store for more information. The Friends and Heroes DVD Club allows members in the UK to collect the DVDs on a monthly basis. Full details are online at www.friendsandheroes.com/dvdclub.

Help for School Teachers

Teachers may download free Lesson Plans and Pupil Worksheets from www.friendsandheroes.com/school-lessons. Prepared by The Stapleford Centre to support the use of Friends and Heroes in schools, the lessons complement all the UK's national RE syllabus guidelines for ages 7-11 including Key Stages 1 and 2 in England and the equivalents in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man.  They also include SEAL, PSHE, Creative and Literacy links.

Resources for Children's Ministry

Those involved in children's ministry will love the Bible Lesson Plans for 5-11 year olds and can download a sample lesson from www.friendsandheroes.com/biblelessons.  Hundreds of churches all over the world use this material on a regular basis and the results have been outstanding. One regular comment from users is that boys love the material and that is very important in today's world.

Download these FREE Friends and Heroes Posters to print! Great for bedroom walls.....

Poster 1; Poster 2; Poster 3