Messy month matters

27 July 2010

The end of July - Messy Month - is nearly upon us and I hope the Messy Month materials have been helpful to you as you've used them and adapted them to keep your Sunday churches informed about what you're doing in Messy Church.

It would really help us for next year's plans if you could let us know in a short email if you used the materials. If you did, which bits were helpful and what sort of a response did you get? (Our church gave a sort of 'Ah. That's nice.' response.) Do you have any good anecdotes, comments or stories that came out of using them?

And if you didn't use them, please let me know if that was because they didn't scratch where it itches so that I don't repeat the mistake next year.

Many thanks!

(August)

And here's a reply from Anne Gerrard in Woolston:

'This morning we held a Messy Sunday to celebrate the end of Messy Church month, it was well received, thankfully!!! We chose to base the service around The Lost Son, making pig faces, hearts, footprints banner and free range painting. Everybody in the congregation made something, for those that didn't want to leave their seats we had pipecleaners for them to fashion into something connected with the story. Ruth retold the story using Godly Play, which went down well. We did use the PowerPoint that was provided on the website as an introduction, to show people what Messy Church is all about, but we wouldn't do that again. Also, we kept, roughly, to the order of Messy Church to enable people to get a feel of Messy Church. Previous to this the children had been colouring in bookmarks, which then had the stickers put on and were given to all members of the congregation as they left. Hope all this helps, please can you let me know if July is always going to be Messy month because if so we will do an annual Messy Sunday.'

Thanks, Anne - and yes, we'll have a Messy Month in July for a while!