Creating, celebrating Church

‘Creating, celebrating Church’ is a good description of Messy Church, a movement that began in the UK and is now 10 years old. In Amberley we started with Messy Church in 2011 and haven’t looked back – it has become a valued link between the parish and wider community and we all enjoy the intergenerational fun. See the Messy Church tab in the menu above for more information.

This Sunday, the creating and celebrating was all about Spring. We heard verses from Psalm 104 accompanied by beautiful images of the natural world. We celebrated Spring in prayer and song, heard a story about Little Baa the lamb, and during craft time made floating paper flowers, a Spring collage picture, and individual fresh fruit salads to go with our usual shared supper. Older children ran the PowerPoint slideshow and helped the younger ones with their crafts, and all enjoyed leading the young lambs brought along by a local farming family.

We put into practice some things learned at the recent Messy Church Conference in Christchurch: new actions to go with our ‘Lord’s Prayer’ and a new Grace: ‘3, 2, 1, food is fun; 1, 2, 3, God bless tea!’