Messy Church

Lucy Moore

Mine has to be the most exciting Inbox in the world at the moment. Just this morning I open it up to find waiting for me an email about a Messy Church happening on the thrillingly-named Copper Coast in Australia. There's also one from a Messy Church regional coordinator, saying she's getting a supermarket interested in supporting her five Messy Churches in Cornwall; one from another regional coordinator about the 160 people who came to their last Messy Church; one from Martyn Payne from BRF, keeping me in touch with the rest of the Barnabas Team and giving me invaluable advice as ever. Mike Moynagh from the national Fresh Expressions Team is kindly offering a listening ear, and several conference venues have left details about their facilities as possible venues for a symposium in the autumn about taking Messy Churches on to maturity. Add to that Radio Solent, who have emailed about just how many of our team and children we can fit into their studio to be messy one Sunday morning on air, and an invitation to lead a workshop in Belgium for children's leaders about Messy Church... in French, and you'll see why I am one of the few people in the UK to rub her hands in glee as Outlook opens up.

Messy Church is like a large amiable dog that's dragging us along breathlessly on a lead towards... who knows where? It has boundless energy and vitality and seems to know where it's going - a bit like C.S. Lewis's Hound of Heaven but less scary, and interestingly, very much in front of us. We used to own Pineau, a dog who was so badly trained that she would charge off on a walk without the slightest regard for the person holding the lead. She was fabulous when it snowed and happily hauled sledges laden with small children up and down hills, tongue lolling, but you had to be careful not to be knocked to the ground in her enthusiasm. Messy Church and Pineau have their similarities.

If we play the numbers game, for an idea of how things are galloping along, as I write, we have 145 Messy Churches signed up to the Directory on the www.messychurch.org.uk website, and many more who haven't signed up. And leaders are reporting very wholesome numbers of those belonging to Messy Churches locally - 160, as mentioned above, is perhaps the highest number I've come across (and most of us would scream and run home if we had to cope with that many), but 40, 50, 60 attending is common. If you average out at a pessimistic 40 per Messy Church in those 145 registered churches, that's around 5800 people coming to church once a month, many of whom belong to no other church. Feel that tug on the lead: God is using Messy Churches to help more people come to know him.

At Messy Fiestas and similar events to share experiences of Messy Church, there is a huge groundswell of interest and enthusiasm. Seminars at events like the Children's Ministry Conference and the Christian Resources Exhibition are very well-attended with questions and stories bursting unstoppably out of the delegates and responses afterwards that show how inspired people are to take things further in their own area or parish.

But we have to watch our step, both with a boisterous hound and with Messy Church. One leader emailed me to say that alongside the joy of seeing growing numbers of children coming with no church background, they are facing problems: 'Volunteers get tired and overloaded and sometimes feel overburdened and we are in danger of losing some... And not enough new ones are coming forward... The key teams are the catering team and the craft team and I think they are both a bit precarious at times...' It would be easy to run out of enthusiasm and to become disillusioned and weary. So we're setting up a network of regional coordinators across the UK to be a first port of call, a fast-response person who offers support when it's needed, and finds ways appropriate to the locality to help Messy Church leaders feel part of something bigger, to help them see how their story fits into a wider story of God working through Messy Churches all over the country, all over the world! The Messy Church website also helps foster a sense of belonging as people share stories, questions, craft and recipe ideas.

There are so many doors opening up: God is giving us the opportunity to learn from our colleagues in Messy Churches in several different denominations, social contexts and countries about how best to be church among families. Most of all he's giving us the gift of introducing many people to Jesus who wouldn't otherwise meet him: now that's worth being dragged along for!