Gary Hoare joins the
MESSY FIESTA
This Saturday I spent at St John’s Church, Harborne, Birmingham. I went to a day organised by the Barnabas In Church Trust for people interested in starting Messy Churches. I went along to see if there was more to learn. The day was called ‘Messy Fiesta’
You may have noticed that there are four core elements to Messy Church, and all the way through the day (10.00am-3.00pm) and throughout the day these were very much in evidence from Lucy Moore.
1. Welcome and hospitality….as soon as I walked in the door Lucy Moore welcomed me and immediately made me feel at ease. Pointed to the coffee, and in the first ten minutes had to find out names through a simple game…finding out what people's skills were…some were good at craft, some were good at cooking, some were good at worship…there was one lad who was about 14 who was a worship leader for a Messy Church and we learned some of the names of people, and where they came from!!!!
2. Making a Mess. We were shown at least six messy craft activities, like marble-painting and putting icing on biscuits and making a pig for a story. Everyone got something messy on their hands like paint, food colouring and sticky fingers from icing.
3. Worship. We prayed at the beginning of the day committing the day to the Lord, because all we seek to do to his praise and glory…at the end of the day we had a longer session of worship to conclude the day.
4. Food and eating together is another core value- we ate sandwiches together and shared together over lunch. At Messy Church we have a meal together. This we did and shared interesting ideas over the tables.
Chatting and laughing.
One of the underlying core elements through all of these is the chatting and laughing sometimes about what you are making and also why we are making it. It never ceases to amaze me that if you give (for example) five people a piece of paper and ask them to draw (for example) a cross on it that you will have five expressions of the cross. So out of being very messy, people end up being very creative. This surely means if people are being creative, we are using our imaginations -and isn’t this so important for how we can interpret the Gospel to families who we seek to reach through Messy Church?
Messy Church abroad!
There are quite a few Messy Churches in Britain, we were told that there is now one in South Africa. I believe that Messy Church is helping many families to find that the church is a fun and friendly place to be. The Churches that have already started Messy Churches were talking about experiences and sharing the things that work for them….what works for them will not necessarily work for us, it depends on the context. No one really knows how far we are from making disciples, but we are definitely, helping families to come together in God’s house and this is good to see.
Recommended website: www.barnabasinchurches.org.uk
Also, check out Google and Messy Church links.
A happy picture from the Children's Afternoon at Summerhill, organised the day before Palm Sunday by Gary and the Adventure leaders who work so hard in the Circuit arranging children's activities
(Photo: Steve Pickering)
Description of 'Messy Church', text of an address to a District Service in Bristol Cathedral on 2nd March, 2008
I am a deacon in the Bristol Kingswood Circuit, and one of the churches I work with is Hanham, a traditional Methodist Church with a historical background. With the Hanham Mount Beacon, visible from the church when it is working, it is a reminder that John Wesley preached there.
I arrived in September 2006 to do family work, to encourage families to come into the life of the church. A number of key older members had died and had reminded everyone that something needed to be done to bring new people to the life of the Church.
The Fresh Expressions DVD was shown to different groups of people, including some newly confirmed young people. On the DVD is a section with the Messy Church on it, with Lucy Moore. Immediately one of the young people asked why the church at Hanham couldn’t do Messy Church. So we set about planning it and doing it at Hanham, which has a large set of premises, and began Messy Church.
DEFINITIONSFor some of our older people the name with Messy Church has been a turn off. So we have explained that it is called this for two reasons…like the book by Lucy Moore says:
1. the people come and make a mess…making things…for instance when the theme was David and Goliath. Some of us made a model of David, and others made one of Goliath…some made armour for David….so then when we get to the worship bit, the story of David and Goliath is told using the things we have made people get messy making the stuff so this is one reason that it is called Messy Church.
2. The other reason we call it Messy Church is because many families are not neat like they used to be…people work on Sundays, they don’t go to church, people are interested in spirituality, but not necessarily organised church services. So it is called Messy Church, reflecting the messiness of the community we live in.
The FORMAT
The format is we run on Sunday afternoons 4-5.30pm. People arrive and join in activities with paint, boxes paper, and whatever we have on offer. During the time people are talking about what they are making and the story it represents. Then at about 4.50pm everyone moves into the church for 20 minutes of worship, which includes a happy and sad section, when we find out what is happening in the families, celebrate birthdays and milestones in peoples’ lives. Everyone is asked for good news stories. We then ask about things that make people sad. We say a short prayer of thanks and celebration, and a prayer that includes the sorry prayer. Then we sing songs and tell the story for the day, and we have puppets who help us in our story telling.
Then we end with the Messy Church prayer… we all move out of the church to a room where we eat food together. People seem to leave sometime after 5.30pm, with time to talk, time to do things with families and a chance to meet with God.
To do all this we had to build a team of people to help us
A welcome team,
worship team,
making it team
and food team.
We had our first Messy Church on Sunday 30th September…to everyone’s delight 27 people came. Most had come from the fringes of church or were new contacts. And at the moment we have 64 people on our list…children and their parents, a mixture of people on the fringes of the church or people who have come new as a result of Messy Church
What is the future for Messy Church?
As long as we have families coming through the doors we believe we have an important ministry in this community…already we after six months are picking up on pastoral issues within families who will be visited.
The implications for Messy Church are: can Messy Church stand alone as a church in its own right? And what will happen when a Messy Church parent asks us to baptise their child? There are things to work out. But we know that whether you call this a Fresh Expression in the strictest sense of the word or not, that God is using this through us to reach families.
Tee shirts and Messy Church logos etc
We have introduced Tee Shirts for the helpers…we have also devised a Messy Church prayer, which we pray together before ending our act of worship…and we have also given the parents a copy of the prayer to pray as often as possible with their children.
We are going to pray that prayer now… you will see in it about God’s love and we always stand and point to each other..I invite you to stand, if you can, and to say the prayer, then after we sing this we sing ‘We are marching in the light of God’.
Dear God
We've made a humungous mess in your church, and we've been happy.
Thank you that we are welcome in your special house, and you don’t mind the mess.
Thank you that you love everyone of us, you, and you and you,and me!
Bless us Lord, all our family and friends, and keep us safe
till we meet again.
Amen.
THE PREVIOUS REPORT from Gary read:
On Sunday 16th September we began the first circuit Youth Alpha course. We had 10 young people start and we have had some others coming and going throughout the first 5 weeks. What is most important about Youth Alpha is that it is an opportunity to present important parts of the Christian message. The research that is available about programmes such as Youth Alpha, shows it is a tool and that it is the relationship that is being built that is more important.
The young people who have been to Youth Alpha seem to have listenened and taken part. We had an away day to Briarlands near to Beach and Bitton. We spent a Sunday there arriving for breakfast and finishing with tea and cakes....in between we had four sessions teaching about the Holy Spirit.
The next thing that happened was that I have now taken over the reins of the District Children, Young People and Young Adults group as the portfolio holder. (This used to be Education and Youth). Because I am the chair of that meeting I automatically have a seat on the District Leadership Team. So I went to my first meeting for this. The Chair (Ward Jones) he said a first in two ways for me the first time being at the meeting and second a deacon on the District Leadership Team. So I feel pleased about this. I was asked if I would do this job, and there will only be little bits I can do to get things going, I sense that for some people District Methodism isn't at the top of their priorities. It might be when they know what the district can do for them. I have been asked if I would help at the District Missions Day November 3rd doing a seminar on Youth Culture. My dissertation for my MA at Cliff College was on Rock Solid as a programme, which was a programme to reach unchurched youth. So I think I can contrbute to this seminar.
7UP
At Longwell Green, there has been concern that we are reaching small children toddlers to 6 year olds. Then there has up until now been nothing for older children. So I have started with help from many able adults 7UP. We meet once a month on a Wednesday evening. On the first occasion we played a word game, decorated balsa wood bugs with high quality paints, we read a verse out of the Bible, and had games with a soft football. On the first occasion we had 4 children and some parents who stayed to assist us. We we were pleased with 4 children but obviously if we can work to start with with the small number we will be ready when more come.
Messy Church
Another event that had been planned was the Messy Church at Hanham. It would be true that when we were planning the first session, no one really knew what it would be like. We had no idea of numbers of people who were likely to come. Sunday 30th September came and so did families through the door. We started at 4pm (the setting up started much earlier than this). As people arrived they were greeted by the welcome team. Then the people who came were able to make things using paints, cardboard and many other things. The theme of the day was loosely God made the world. So some people made jelly fish. Everyone was invited into the chapel for worship which lasted 20 minutes. At the worship time the puppets Minnie, Billie and.....made an appearance COG the clown = Child of God also appeared acting out his version of the creation story. We had some songs. Then we went into the hall area for tea.
The first Messy Church had amazed me and many other people, we could at last see what it could be like, and the children and parents said they couldn’t wait for the next one which is in October.
At Summerhill three notable things have been happening.
Back in August we held a day called ‘Holiday at Home’. This was a day at Summerhill church for older people. It is really aimed at people who are lonely and probably wouldnt go on holidays. We had a really positive response. August 7th was the date we picked and many people came. It would be true to say that people at Summerhill worked very hard to do this, but, saw what a good time people had. When people arrived there was tea and coffee; people had a choice of things to do, including bingo, making cards, flower arranging. At mid-day there was a ‘Thought for the Day’. There was a good meal followed by more making things reading the papers and a sing along. At the end of the day there was a cup of tea and cakes and people went home having had a good time.
Summerhill also agreed to a partnership with the Mullers International. They are a Christian group who have worked with families for many years. This partnership is to help the church to look at what it is doing and try and bridge relationships particularly with the Pram Club and hopefully work in other areas of church life too. I was asked back earlier in the year if I would be a Community Governor for Summerhill Infants school. I have to attend a full governors meeting usually once a term. The first month of being appointed I was involved in meeting with others the appointment of the new head teacher, who started in September. It has been interesting being in the meetings. They don't seem to take too long and are very to the point. There is also plenty of jargon to get used to (at times the Methodist Church is just as bad at providing new jargon!) The reason for being Community Governor is to allow Summerhill Methodist Church to have something it was doing in the locality.
Now we also do assemblies at Air Balloon School, which is also representing them in the community.
In May I spent a week at Cliff College helping set up for the annual festival and running a seminar on healing in the church. I had 36 people attend the seminar and when people were invited to come out for healing, 15 people came forward for ministry. Over the weekend, I spent time being a student pastor, looking out for the students over a busy weekend. Also people asked for prayer in many different places. This all shows me how God is so good, and I feel very humbled that God chooses to use me and many other people to do his will. It occurs to me that I come across hundreds of children every week in one way or another, so I feel that my work in the circuit is really taking off, and hopefully now with help from others the churches will begin to benefit from the contacts made.
The purpose of this page is to inform, to give things to praise God for, and also to help you to pray. I trust that you will continue to pray for all the work going on in Jesus’ name