Lichfield Dynamism

24 March 2010

Jane was in touch recently with Rob Farmer from St James' Parish Church, Longdon in Staffordshire (Lichfield Diocese). Have a read of this - it's a fantastic story of outreach, mission, growth and jollity:

'We've only had one Messy Church as yet, so it's still early days for us. At the moment we're aiming to have the event every half-term. We are a small rural community, population approx. 1300. The church here has missed a couple of generations, so we do not have any children or young families on a Sunday. However, we do have a small Church School, so I focused much of my effort there, and we used the local newspaper to advertise the event.

'Result? 52 children and 56 adults - a fantastic time had by all and so many positive comments. We used the Joseph theme as we thought it would be at least slightly familiar to those we hoped would come. We expected anything up to 20 kids - what can I say, God is good!

'The team are meeting again this week to plan the next Messy Church @ Big Jim's - if there is anything we can feed back to you we will.

'I came along to the Fiesta you did in Stafford last June with my eldest
daughter - she was totally smitten with the idea and has been the driving
force behind it here. Amazing for an introvert 15-year-old.'

... Anyhow, major success here and we are all looking forward to the next one.