Posts Tagged ‘Messy Church’

The Simple … and Messy … Things in Life.

Posted: November 23, 2014 in Uncategorized
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Life is made up of experiences, sometimes dramatic or traumatic, but most of the time simple everyday events that come and go without a second thought.

Eating, playing, worshipping, creating, and sharing become the raw materials that over a lifetime come together to produce a mosaic that we call life, and while we may have missed the significance of some of them at the time, we can look back and realise how valuable they were in the overall picture.

On Saturday night we participated in our monthly church activity, Messy Church, and I had that sense that this one of those moments that made a significant contribution to the fabric of life. It was the last Messy Church for the year and we had a Christmas theme. It was a joy to see people of all ages from babies through to grandparents working together on an activity (I’ll tell you about that in a moment), singing Christmas songs together, playing games, hearing the story of Christmas, praying, and eating together.

These things happen in our own families every day but to bring many families together in this way is what I think the apostle Paul was thinking of when he said, Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. In an age when people seem to be withdrawing into virtual relationships it is great to participate in an activity where real relationships are formed with people across generational barriers.

Now, I mentioned the activity that we participated in at Messy Church on Saturday. We built a Christmas Tree. Have a look at this video to see what happened:

The Web of Prayer

Posted: November 24, 2013 in Uncategorized
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We participated in a great activity at Messy Church on Saturday night, creating a web that filled the whole room.  We then pinned prayers to the web and reflected on the way in which God hears our prayers, no matter how messy the situation in which we find ourselves. Take a look at this video showing the results of the evening’s activity:

Messy Church Grand Final Challenge

Posted: September 29, 2013 in Uncategorized
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I loved the comment that appeared on my blog this week: Just a story I would like to share following on from the Fun Factory: Adam was saying to me today that when he went to the Fun Factory activities in the holidays that they told him about a man who lives in the sky and stops bad things happening to people and he couldnt remember his name, I told him it would have been Jesus, he said oh yes it was. I said that some people dont believe in Jesus and he said sternly: ‘Well that’s because they didn’t go to the Fun Factory isn’t it!’

If you’ve been to Fun Factory you’ll love Messy Church that is held at MVBC on the fourth Saturday of each month. The difference is that Messy Church is not just for kids. In fact, more and more I’m thinking it’s what church should be like. Kids and parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, teens and singles, all getting together to work together, play together, worship together and eat together. We do all those things in a pretty informal way and through it all we’re getting to know Jesus better.

In a changing world it’s important that we reimagine the church and look for new and different ways that we can gather together as followers of Jesus, and even as people who are thinking about what following Jesus might look like. Messy Church is one of those options that are available and I suspect we also need to think about other ways we can help people move closer to God.

I’m convinced that the church has served God well over the centuries, but it has changed during that time and needs to continue to change if our world is going to experience the good news of Jesus. I’m loving be a part of that change and looking forward to what may be around the corner.

If you want to get a picture of what Messy Church looks like, take a look at this video from our Grand Final Challenge on Saturday.

Life is Messy

Posted: May 20, 2013 in Uncategorized
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Life is messy. Things don’t always go to plan and just when you think you’re on top of it all, something seems to go wrong. You may call it Murphy’s Law, or you may just admit that we are not in a perfect world.

There are various ways of dealing with the mess of life – either we can run away from it with the help of alcohol, drugs or retail therapy, or we can face it with the help of someone stronger and wiser than ourselves. I’ve found that Jesus is the one who is stronger and wiser than me, and in trusting him, I have found that he can help me through the mess of life.

The theory is that the church should be the one place where we can openly deal with the mess and there’ll be people who understand us and can help us through it. The truth is that it’s not always like that, simply because none of us are perfect. But when a group of people who know what a mess life can be like, get together and start to allow Jesus to deal their mess and begin to support each other to follow the Way of Jesus, I reckon we start to see really good things happen.

Messy Church is held on the fourth Saturday of each month at Maida Vale Baptist Church, High Wycombe, from 4.30pm to 6.30pm. As the name suggests, we recognise that life is messy and that church should be about acknowledging this and helping people find a way through the mess.

Take a look at this video to get a picture of what Messy Church is all about.