The Background to Messy Church

The first Messy Church began in 2004 when a group at St Wilfrid's in Cowplain near Portsmouth were frustrated because, as a church, we were hardly reaching any children with God's story.

We had lovely buildings and facilities but we weren't using them enough. We had wonderful creative people in the church, and the area we lived in needed as much community-building as possible, being a rather featureless suburb.

There was a lot of sympathy towards church in general but the church wasn't offering anything that really gripped the imagination of local families.

We decided very early on to try to do something for all ages together, partly out of a belief that we grow best as a church when we walk the journey with as many different people as possible, and partly from a desire to help families grow together in their walk of faith, not see Christianity as something you grow out of when you're eleven.

The rest is history... a messy present... and an unknown future that you may well be part of too!

BRF has embraced Messy Church with it becoming a core part of the Barnabas ministry. Barnabas is now assisting churches who have caught the vision and need help in running Messy Church. BRF is enabling Lucy and others in the Barnabas team to develop resources, ideas and training to facilitate the growth of Messy Church.