Norfolk News

18 March 2010

Graham Miles is our regional coordinator in Norfolk and his Messy Church is having interesting interplay with Sunday church. He emailed recently about what's been going on. I love his throwaway comment: 'Everyone thought it was great to have the church come alive like that on a Sunday morning.'

'Hi Lucy
yes we are getting back to normal, whatever normal may be.
MC in Aylsham: we are now in our fourth year with regular MC each third Saturday of the month, we have new faces almost each time. One of the challenges we faced (but I did not see it as much of a challenge) was to encourage families to come to church on the Sunday morning from Messy Church/ (I did not see this as a challenge as I have always looked upon MC as church on Saturday afternoon.)

'However, since Christmas we have had four family groups come regularly to Sunday Morning Worship, this has revived a flagging Sunday club with eight new faces.

'Last year I was privileged to conduct a messy baptism (this was after some serious theological reflection). At the moment we are holding a membership class with four adults from MC attending, one of them is asking to be baptised later on in the year, we are making arrangements with the local baptist church, so this will be an ecumenical event. There will also be another of the MC children baptised on Easter morning.

'One of the regular people at MC is great at bringing new people into the MC service.
I had a great experience at Aylsham on Sunday a few weeks ago - the church was already fairly full, we were coming to Holy Communion where during the singing of the pre-Communion hymn the children are collected from the hall at the back of the church. Everyone was delighted to see around eight fresh and eager children come down the steps alongside the pulpit. As they came in, they greeted me with a wave and a cheery, "Hello Graham". Then some wanted to know where Sammy was, (Sammy is the puppet I use in MC). I then welcomed the children and told them that it was OK if they were a bit noisy, God liked seeing happy faces in his church, and in the usual Methodist way I explained that we had an open table, open to all who loved Jesus. We had parents and children coming up to receive Communion for the first time. Some of the younger ones were happily playing with Stickle Bricks near to where we have a prayer ministry. Everyone thought it was great to have the church come alive like that on a Sunday morning.

'This leads on to the next bit: we will be planning a Messy Communion where we can explore the meaning of Communion as part of the Saturday MC.
Also I have been asked to go over to one of the villages to help them set up Messy Church, and I have had considerable interest from other churches.
So life is busy
Graham'