New Zealand News

07 January 2010

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:

'Well, we featured on national television TV1 on Christmas Eve with a repeat on Christmas morning. It was wonderful and came across very well...

'Our Christmas Messy was really good. Our bishop came, a very dynamic lady. She was really pleased. Certainly we are attracting good numbers from fringe families, which is most encouraging. We get between 80-100. I'm considering moving from every 6 weeks to every 3rd week in the month. We'll see. At the moment I have 22 on the overall team, which includes kitchen etc. The biggest need is for good upfront folk. Some of the team are older folk and so I am conscious of energy levels and time commitments. I led a team evening before Christmas, which was a great success. I painted a broad picture of where we have been and are likely to be heading in terms of shape and structure. Your comments from book 2 were extremely helpful and right on track with where I am coming from...

'I have made email contact with the other folks here doing Messy Church. They are mainly in the North Island. We have agreed some telephone contact later this month. NZ 'dies' in January. It is summer here and after Christmas everyone heads off for most of the month. It's a bit like August in the UK but more so.'