July s sy Me h M nt o 2012 July is Messy Month 2012. Ring the bells! Light the fireworks! Fly the bunting! What an opportunity to celebrate all that is happening in Messy Church locally and globally! As more and more Messy Churches continue to pop up all over the world, we can only stand totally in awe of all the blessings God is bestowing on our communities through prayer, teams, crafts, food, songs, stories and love. Messy Month is a chance to celebrate and share all the Messy news and information with your other church congregations, inviting them to be part of the Messy ministry in prayerful, practical and financial ways, and to thank God for all he s doing through our Messy Churches. July is a good month to plan outdoor celebrations: it s before the school summer holidays and there may already be annual events happening such as summer fetes or garden parties that you could link up with. This is also a month of great excitement and anticipation as athletes from countries all over the world congregate in London, England for the Olympic Games. Giving financially to Bible Reading Fellowship (BRF) helps us to support, enable and resource Messy Church in so many ways: through the Messy Church resources and website, and the training that Lucy Moore and Jane Leadbetter provide. As the Messy Church network grows in numbers and faith, BRF ensures the continued development of ideas to sustain this ministry. BRF is a charity and depends on the generosity of its supporters. Why not consider becoming a Messy Champion whereby you can support the work of Messy Churches financially? BRF celebrates its 90th anniversary in 2012. Messy Church is one of our core ministries and we will be celebrating this in Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire on Sunday 1 July. So if you are near enough to join in the Messy celebration, go to www.messychurch.org. uk/pages/6653.htm for more details. And to find out other ways in which BRF is marking this anniversary, go to www.brf.org.uk. This pack contains: 1 Ideas for bringing Messy and other congregations together 2 Worship ideas 3 Stories 4 Craft ideas 5 A PowerPoint presentation on Messy Church that can be personalised with photos and information of your own Messy Church 6 Details of how to become a Messy Champion
1 Ideas for bringing congregations together A Messy service Invite your Sunday service planners to join you in planning a Messy Service for all ages together. Choose the best all-age time for the Sunday service. Advertise well in advance so that no one turns up surprised to see any changes. Incorporate a clip from the Messy Church DVD to show how denominations all over the world are involved in Messy Church. Make space for everyone to enjoy crafts together. Or invite the Sunday congregations to a one-off Messy Church. A Messy trip out Organise a family-friendly walk or cinema trip or visit a theme park, safari park, leisure centre, the seaside, or National Trust venue. A Messy project Look at your immediate community area do a litter pick or garden tidy, a paint job or bulb planting. Incorporate food somehow and finish with a meal. A Messy Fun Day Bring out your gazebos and bouncy castles for a community few hours of mini Olympic games, cake sale, face painting, paddling pool beach, craft tables, bedding plant sale, beer tent, fresh strawberries and a BBQ. Or organise a car treasure hunt ending with a BBQ. A Messy meal A picnic, Messy Chef competition, afternoon tea, BBQ, Messy Cup Cake Competition, or Messy Breakfast with croissants and bacon. A Messtival Arrange for each organisation in the church plus Messy Church to organise a gazebo activity. Invite a band and a local VIP, and do a family overnight camp. Start Saturday lunchtime and end after Sunday church with lunch. Messy Aid Help your community groups by inviting local charities to take part in a Table Sale in the church hall. Each charity organises their own table for display/selling and the congregations organise the flyers, posters and refreshments. Messy Messterpieces Discover the gifts and talents of your congregations with an exhibition/crafts/skills event where anyone can show or display how talented they are at knitting, painting, cooking, embroidery, calligraphy, brick laying and so on. Messy Awards Party Send personal invitations to all the teams/workers and their families in the church to a glamorous night with food, red carpet, silly awards (best donations bucket shaker, best grinning welcomer, messiest person ), and include the children. Everyone must dress up! Messy Greetings Smile, wave, click! Take a photo of your congregations waving and post on your website or Facebook, or email to other churches. Find another Messy Church to twin with. Add a written welcoming/greeting caption. Other opportunities: Invite all congregations to collect wanted items for craft collages, Bring and Buys, etc. Take Messy cakes to the coffee time after the service(s). Present the Sunday church with a gift: decorate a table cloth, a kneeler, a banner. Sunday church could present Messy Church with a gift. Ask the Sunday congregations if anyone would like to be Messy Pray-ers. Present the Sunday congregations with Messy Church prayerbookmarks. Have a recruitment drive for more leaders.
2 Worship suggestions Readings 2 Samuel 23:12: David s brave and courageous men. Mark 8:34 38: No compromises, fully commit to God no matter what the cost. 1 Corinthians 9:24 27: Run the Christian race with the intent to win the prize. Running the race 1 Corinthians 9:24 27 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Messy message Who would like to join my keep-fit club? Come and join me and listen carefully. Every time I say race I want you to jog five steps on the spot! I wonder how many times you have been in a race in your lifetime. Maybe you remember being in your first school sports day running with an egg on a spoon. Or maybe you remember being in the school cross-country race and having very muddy shoes at the end! There are so many kinds of races we may experience as children at school. Can you tell me any? And when you grow up you may like to keep fit by jogging and competing in marathons and city runs. Or you join an athletic club and enjoy track events like relay and hurdling. Or maybe you are good at driving cars and compete in car races? Or you ride horses or bikes? The very first Olympic Games in Greece lasted just one day and there was just one event a sprint from one end of the stadium to the other! Gradually more and more events were introduced. In London at the end of this month there will be 26 sports featured. Each sport will have competitors taking part from all over the world who have been preparing for this very moment the time to win! They will have been training for years, focusing on their own specialist sport. If they have trained for the 800 metres race you will not see them swimming in the Olympic pool. If they have trained for the 100-metre hurdles you will not see them on the badminton courts. They enter what they are equipped for and to win a gold medal. What kind of things will each competitor have done in their training and preparation? (Daily routine, healthy diet, make time, and so on.) Why have all the competitors trained so hard for the Olympic Games? (To win an Olympic medal.) In the Bible Paul talks about the Christian life being like a race. Paul wants us all to race as Christians, but also he wants us to win something. He wants us to win the prize that is Jesus and heaven. In the very early days of the Olympic Games the winner received a wreath made from olive leaves. The wreath was made like a crown to wear on the head, and the winners would take them home and watch them fade and wither and die. Paul tells us that the prize we are racing for would be a much greater prize. It would last forever. Paul was talking to the people of Corinth, who all knew about the Isthmian Games which took place every two years in Corinth. Although smaller than the Olympic Games, they were extremely popular. The winners received crown wreaths made from celery and later pine. Paul wants us to train hard and be disciplined in our Christian lives. God gives each of us the strength we need to finish the race and win it well. We can pray and worship. We can read the Bible. We can do these things well, not half-heartedly. God helps us to focus on the winning line. He wants us to do well in preparation, training and running the race. He doesn t want us to start and falter or quit. So let s run the race for Jesus! To talk about Athletes spend a lot of time training. How much time do you give to God? Do you know any sportspeople or athletes? What sort of things do they do to win their game or race? Think of one thing you do for God which makes him say well done. An athlete has a daily warm-up exercise. What could your daily spiritual exercise be? Who could you invite to join you in running the race? Prayers Dear Lord full of Grace, we thank you for inviting us to the starting line. We thank you for accepting us just as we are and for running alongside each one
of us as we race along your track. Your strength and encouragement will keep us going forever. We pray for those who have not yet reached the starting point. Help us to invite them in your name. Thank you that through Messy Church we can invite all ages to come to know you. May they feel your love as we welcome them in. Dear Lord, we thank you that we can Trace your footsteps as we run in our race for you. You are the best example of how we should live our lives. We pray that each step we take will spur us on towards the winning line. Help us along the way during good times and bad and keep us firmly on the right track, not falling by the wayside or giving in due to weakness. We thank you that Messy Church provides teams of all ages, encouraging each other through creativity and love to be part of your even bigger team. May they all be blessed with fruitful friendships with one another and you. Dear Lord, we Embrace every moment we have in your presence at Messy Church. We thank you for being with us in our welcoming times. May we embrace with your love each person who comes to Messy Church, young or old. Help us to build relationships and to be a listening ear to those in need. Pour out your Spirit on those needing renewal or refreshment. We thank you for being with us in our creative times, learning more about you as we paint a picture or glue on glitter. We thank you for being with us as we celebrate and praise you. May we grow more like you as we sing, hear stories and pray to you. Dear Lord, as we Race to the winning line with the hope of reaching heaven we thank you for sustaining us when we are weary, for feeding us the food of love and giving us the recipe for good Christian health. We thank you for the hospitality that Messy Church allows through the welcome, shopping, preparation, cooking and serving. We thank you for the gifts you have given us to care for everyone in our community. May we continue to share your love with everyone as we have fun and fellowship in Messy Church. 3 Stories There are many stories of how God is working through Messy Church around the world. You can read them on the Messy Church website: www.messychurch.org.uk. There are also various clips on Messy Church the DVD which could be viewed to hear comments from Messy Churches. Even better, you may have witnessing stories about your own Messy Church to share. Revd Caroline Throup at St Margaret s Church in Burnage, Manchester shares her story of trying a Messy Sunday in 2011: We started a monthly Messy Church (Mondays 3.30 to 5.30) on Valentine s Day 2011. Most of those who have been coming to Messy Church belong to (or did belong to) our very popular weekly Toddler Group but only rarely, if ever, attend Sunday services. This year, we took a decision to hold a Messy Sunday Celebration on Sunday 3 July because it was close in the calendar to the Messy Sunday being advocated nationally and also because the first Sunday of the month is our usual all-age celebration service. So, this month, we went Messy Church style, spending the first hour on crafts, activities and games in our Parish Centre with plenty of tea and coffee supplies available. We also set out a Bible reading corner and several prayer stations in church and kept that as a wonderful quiet space for the hour where people sat quietly with God s Word, in prayer or just in silence. At 11.30 we all joined together in church for half an hour of celebration together in the usual Messy Church format of songs, story and prayer, but with a few C of E extras we don t always use at Messy Church: prayer of confession, Collect (called today s special prayer ) and the Lord s prayer. We retold the story of the BBQ on the beach with Jesus (John 21) and made chenille stick fish shapes to place in a fishing net as a response to Jesus question Do you love me? At the end of the celebration, we decamped outside into glorious sunshine (just like it always is in Manchester!) and enjoyed a BBQ and lots and lots of home-baked cakes. We also had a bouncy castle and other games and activities for younger people. In total we had 112 adults and 44 children, combining both Sunday regulars and Messy Church regulars into one service. The Messy Church team was absolutely delighted that it couldn t really have gone
better. It was great to give so many Sunday church people the chance to really experience this Messy Church thing they ve been hearing about over the last few months. Some clearly found it very difficult and some weren t shy of voicing their protests! but overall most were positive, being very encouraged to see so many new families in church. Personally, I m really excited about the whole Messy Church movement it really seems something that must be a move of the Holy Spirit. I sense that God is doing something in and through this very different way of being and doing church in Burnage. And, as someone who has spent years trying to avoid children s work, all-age and all that stuff, I can only laugh at God s incredible sense of humour in using me in my first year of curacy to get Messy Church going at St Margaret s. Katie Norman at Philadelphie Messy Church, Jersey, writes: We re a fairly typical rural Methodist church with a predominantly ageing Sunday congregation where, by God s grace, he decided to plant a Messy Church. As ever, he knew exactly what he was doing and Messy Church has proved to be amazing, not only in its witness to the 65 or so people of all ages who meet together on the first Tuesday of each month but also in the way in which it has reached out to fringe people being involved in the running of it. This has resulted in a leadership team that is so passionate and energised that we have also felt prompted to take Messy Church out into the community. Last year we had a marquee at one of the island s major events where thousands were present, and at the end of this month we will be providing a similar opportunity for folk to meet with Jesus, in a Messy Church way, at a much smaller local fete. Wonderful opportunities to share the love of Jesus, for which we give thanks. With the obvious success of Messy Church, and witnessing the joy of the children and their eagerness to participate, we started to become more aware of the needs of a small group of special needs adults who attend our Sunday worship. With this in mind, and after a considerable amount of prayer, we decided to start a Messy Church style meeting (which we call Messy Church Community), every other month. The format remains the same with an hour of theme-based craft/activities and a longer worship session (about half an hour), finishing off with a very scrumptious Afternoon Tea. We opened our doors in February and were privileged to welcome 40 people to our first session, and what a delight it was for all! We decided to focus on The fruit of the Spirit as a theme for the year and with Love and Faithfulness behind us (April 49 attended) we eagerly look forward to sharing Kindness and Patience at our June session with some very special people! 4 Craft activities Messy Decathlon Prepare a sheet/passport with the following ten craft activities for each member of the congregation. Attract competition by inviting everyone to achieve all of the activities in a certain amount of time. Organise a Messy Ceremony to give an award those who achieve all activities. If you are short of time, create a Messy Pentathlon with five craft activities. There are many more ideas on sporty themes in the book Sports Fun for Messy Churches. Crown wreath Wrap a strip of paper or card around your head to measure the size, allowing an overlap for fastening. Draw around leaf templates on to green paper, cut out and stick along the strip. When full, wrap around your head and fasten with sticky tape or sticky tabs. Create a catapult Roll pages of old newspapers into a small roll. Fasten around the middle with tape. Lay a strong rubber band on a table and place the centre of the newspaper roll on top. Bring the rubber band around each side and interlock with a loop. Place a spoon through the loop. Use masking tape to secure the newspaper roll to the table. Place the spoon centrally through the rubber band and place a marshmallow in the spoon. Hit the spoon handle hard to catapult the marshmallow into a bucket or target. Use a tablespoon or dessertspoon for a marshmallow, or a teaspoon for popcorn! Adjust the placement of the spoon handles according to skill. Winner s medal Use gold or silver card circles with threaded ribbon or wool and decorate. Or use round pastry cutters on
air-hardening clay (remember a hole for the ribbon). Or make round card shapes with a 2012 design made from glued-on chenille sticks. Press aluminum foil over the top, taking care over the chenille shapes. Mini edible torches Ice cream cone with a fairy cake pushed in the top and decorated with red/orange/yellow icing or toppings. Messy bowling Create a target on the floor and each contestant rolls a hardboiled egg (not as easy as it sounds!). The nearest aim to the middle of the target wins. Sailing craft Fill a paddling pool with shallow water. Use value pan sponge scourers to make mini sailing boats. Cut out triangular-shaped foam sails. Decorate with felt-tipped pens. Push a drinking straw through two slit-holes in the sail for a mast. Push the mast into the sponge and float on the water. Blow to make it sail. Javelin How far can you throw a drinking straw or piece of dried spaghetti? Design a Messy trainer shoe Photocopy a sports trainer outline on to paper. Create your own messy design. Nike was the Greek winged goddess of victory. On the reverse write a short prayer asking God to keep you safe on the race track to the winning line Jesus. Shot put Use small sponge play balls and try to throw them into a bucket from a distance. Minute to Win It! challenge Blow Football: place a ping pong ball on a smooth table with a carton taped at each end of the table, on its side, for a goal. How many times can you blow the ball into a goal from each end of the table in one minute? Remember how in the very first Olympic Games there was just one event a sprint from one end of the stadium to the other. Winners ceremony Invite everyone who completed all ten activities in the time slot to come forward for a prize/certificate. Take a photograph with their permission. Bring the ceremony to an end with a short prayer and a giant Mexican wave Amen. 5 Powerpoint This is a brief, colourful summary of what Messy Church is so that you can bring it to life for your Sunday church. Change the wording in slide 4 if you shape your Messy Church differently. Slide 5 just needs a text box inserting, and you can fill in the names of any local Messy Churches you know of, or simply delete it. Change any photos to your own, but please include the logo/website at some point. After the final slide, we have included five other slides with messy backgrounds in case you want to use them for other ideas personal to your situation at different points in the slideshow. 6 Become a Messy Champion Could you become a Messy Champion? By becoming a Messy Champion your monthly gift could make a big difference in helping us secure the 158,000 a year that we need to fund Messy Church. Visit www. messychurch.org.uk/champions to find out more. You can contact BRF on 01865 319700 or email messychurch@brf.org.uk to request a leaflet with details about Messy Champions, or just fill in the pages that follow.