You may remember Martyn and I did some Barnabas work in and around Aberdeen last year. I was delighted to receive notice of this blog which shows how one evening's training can result in a huge impact on a community: Mountain Tops and Monday Mornings
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Hand in Hand - an excellent title for a conference on children's and family ministry, as it's all about partnership with churches, supportive organisations like S.U. and Barnabas, the children's and family workers and the children and families themselves. We had a great time over the weekend, meeting so many friends old and new. I was worried that no-one would come to the Messy Church seminar as everyone knows about it already, but about a hundred people came and very few fell asleep.
And Jane had gloomily predicted that there would be nobody at 9.15 on a Sunday morning to hear about faith at home, but she was wrong by about seventy warm bodies. It was so good to meet so many enthusiasts, with people bubbling over with what Messy Church is doing to bring people closed to God in their patch.
The Saturday evening's entertainment was a series of happy near-disasters - by the time the first two acts had substituted a rubber chicken for one of the patriarchs and nearly annihilated a poor chap who met his match in a pink balloon, we were ready for anything to happen. Such a generous audience: I still don't know why asking a nice straightforward warm-up question like, ''So, have you had anything to eat tonight?" should have been met with side-splitting hoots of laughter, but laugh they did.
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Another email made me stop and think about how we encourage Messy Church teams to put on the very best they can for God and for the people they serve. See how you react to it, especially if you read it in conjunction with Thomas's comments from Canada (blog on 6 Jan)
Having visited a worship session recently which was described to me as 'Messy Church',’but which seemed to be a case of using the label as an excuse not to think things through or plan properly, I think that there is need to 'go back to basics'!
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Jane's compiling recipes and ideas for a Messy Church Cooks' Handbook and has sent out a questionnaire to the regional coordinators. Interesting that the replies so far show a huge difference in what happens food-wise at Messy Church. Some feed only the children, as adults in their area prefer to eat later with commuting spouses. Some provide finger food. One I heard of has finger food but with hot sausages from the kitchen every time to beef the food up a bit.
While I understand there are different situations and limitations in every church (like our loathsome and malevolent oven, for instance) it's worth looking at your food provision once in a while and asking if there's any way you can use the opportunity better to provide hospitality that's a witness to Jesus' own hospitality. Sitting eating at a table together is a cornerstone of Messy Church and wordlessly says so much about being community, being family, being open-handed: if you don't eat together yet, perhaps you could suggest to your team that you give it a try and see what happens?
We had a heated discussion at Messy Tea (our training course) on whether or not to have freshly prepared food as a matter of principle. It came down to agreeing that yes, it would be ideal to have everything straight from an organic farm and lovingly hand-chopped, but our team simply hasn't time to do that. Either we make do with shortcuts like ready-made pasta sauce or we keep our eyes open for someone who's free and able to chop leeks for 60 people on a regular basis - and for machines that help.
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Great to hear from our New Zealand regional coordinator Debbie Smith about Messy Church on TV, episcopal support, networking and - to me, writing this in the snow - back-to-front summer holidays!
You can read about Debbie and Andrew's first Messy Church here - there are some interesting reflections in the article about being people of peace nad a very fine picture of NZ ketchup in action.
Here are parts of Debbie's encouraging email:
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