Transitions

10 February 2010

Jean's thoughts about transitions (blog from yesterday) got one of our regional coordinators thinking. Here Cerys Hughes from Wales shares what her Messy Church does to move people on from craft to celebration:

'Regarding getting people to leave crafts and move on to worship, we faced a similar challenge. We overcame this by playing "Conga" music loudly over the speaker system and assembling everyone into a human train to dance our way to the worship area. This worked well for some time but to keep things fresh recently we have adapted the idea again and have tried marching and simple chants - this month we are using improvised musical instruments, so listen out for us!! Of course you could use any style on this basic principle. We found that if people are formally asked to join a line and participate in something they are more likely to do so - plus, what a way to prepare ourselves for worship!!

'Where chaos allows, we also try to announce a five-minute warning before the end of crafts to allow people to finish off.'