Doing church €“ the messy way!

|PIC1|It’s been five years since Lucy Moore flung open the doors of St Wilfrid’s in Cowplain and invited in local children and their parents for a less than conventional experience of church.

What greeted them was not an unfamiliar sermon or set of rituals, but rather tables of paints and paper, scissors and glue, and a friendly invitation to get messy. Out of that afternoon of crafts, food and worship, Messy Church was born and St Wilfrid’s has never looked back.

“The lack of children was a trigger point for us,” recalls Lucy, a professional actor and storyteller who coordinates Messy Church nationwide with the help of the Bible Reading Fellowship. “The number of children coming to St Wilfrid’s was going down and we felt we had a fantastic story but we weren’t sharing it with anybody.”

Although the Hampshire church considered reaching out to children in isolation, they came to the conclusion that it would be far more effective to reach out to children through their parents. Since then, they’ve held Messy Church once a month to reach people of all ages who don’t yet come to church and it’s proved to be as popular with the children as it is with their parents and grandparents.

“That desire to create is in everybody, however old they are!” Lucy laughs. “There is something of the creator God in all of us. There’s this need to create, to have fun and to make meaning out of chaos. That’s something deeply human and deeply divine.”

It’s not simply about cutting and pasting, though, as Lucy and other Messy Church organisers around the country treat the whole hour as worship. From the welcome tea and time of crafts, to the 15-minute celebration and the home-cooked meal that everyone shares together at the end.

“We put the celebration in to focus everything and make sure people realise that it really is church,” she says. “And we say a Messy Church grace and everyone sits down and talks and eats. It’s a very messy time but also a very precious time.”

With many of the children and adults coming from outside the church, going with the flow is important. The volunteers don’t wear anything like official Messy Church T-shirts so that the atmosphere stays friendly and relaxed, and everything is done by invitation. Sometimes the parents watch their kids get messy from the sidelines, at other times they join in. But whichever way, Lucy sees every moment as an opportunity to build meaningful relationships and reveal something of the love of God to every person that comes.

“Sometimes it’s the only time they have to hear the Gospel in the month. We bring the Gospel to them not only through words but also by the way we behave, the way we are with them,” she says.

Letting the conversation flow naturally is also important but there are always opportunities to share something of God whenever the moment fits.

|PIC1|“We’re working on that all the time: how we can make the most of conversations without making it forced and scaring people off?!” she says. “You have occasional brilliant sparks of conversation like ‘oh what does it mean to be a born again Christian?’ or a child leaving with lots of crafts in their hands and saying something like ‘yes and God loves giving you things too’. It’s very serendipitous.”

Numbers wise the initiative has proved a huge success, with more than a hundred children turning up to some Messy Church sessions. It has also led to baptisms and confirmations in some places, not only among the children but also their parents.

Although not everyone is ready to take that step, the parents regard Messy Church as a good place for their children to grow and they see the Messy Church leaders as genuine friends. It’s not uncommon for parents to come to the Messy Church leaders asking for advice about a matter related to their child.

“Although the media would have everyone believe people have moved on from Christianity, in the real world there are a lot of people in our country who want to worship God and raise their children in the Christian faith,” Lucy contends.
“Christianity is still the default setting of our country and they want to give something of their faith to their children. It’s still very important to them.”

For the kids who have been coming to Messy Church since it first began in 2004, it’s the only form of church they’ve ever known. The older children are encouraged to become a Messy Church leader and use their gifts and talents to lead the crafts but the discipleship aspect is still largely uncharted territory.

Last year, Lucy received funding from the Bible Reading Fellowship to go full-time with Messy Church and has since set about building up a nationwide network of regional Messy Church coordinators to exchange some ideas with.

She says: “Messy Church is certainly proving popular as a doorway to church but in terms of the depth of discipleship, it’s by their fruits you shall know them and right now we’re thinking about what kind of Christians Messy Church is encouraging. We won’t know that for a few years at least.”

In that sense, Messy Church is an unfinished story. Another area Lucy is keen to develop is the ways in which parents can take Christianity into their homes for the remainder of the month.

“How do we encourage people to do faith at home?” she asks. “How can we help people to see that the church isn’t responsible for the spiritual life of their family, that they are, and that the church can equip them to bring up their children in the Christian faith?”

These are questions Lucy hopes can be answered together with the Messy Church parents. She concludes: “It’s exciting how many parents are interested in how to pray, how to read the Bible, how to pray before dinner. We are looking at the way forward in this. But instead of teaching, we want to learn from them and we want them to meet God with us together. We are doing church for people who don’t come to church and we’re doing it together as a family.”


On the web: www.messychurch.org.uk