Messy Church Goes Wild aims to encourage Messy Churches to meet God outdoors, love the natural world, experience a sense of awe and wonder, and be more eco-aware in all we do. It’s a movement which is gathering pace across the country, in many different contexts: urban, suburban and rural. This week and next we’re highlighting two very different churches, the first in home counties Cheam and next week, rural Wales.
2 June 2024
From muddy to messy
Hannah Thomson (pictured below) has been a vicar in Worcester Park and Cheam, in Southwark diocese, for two-and-a-half years. There are five churches (three in Cheam and two in Worcester Park) and one in another parish, and they work as a group. ‘It sounds complicated,’ she says, and when she was applying for the job, she thought, How on earth does this work? But it does, and it allows each member of the team to play to their strengths, and in Hannah’s case, this is children and families ministry.
In the time she’s been there, she’s overseen the re-organisation and flourishing of Messy Church across the group, with up to 80 people at every session. But she’s always been keen to get people outdoors:
‘One of my churches in Worcester Park has a nice graveyard space and I tried a couple of outdoor sessions there. This was before Messy Church Goes Wild came out, and I called it muddy church. But there were a few issues. One being that although it’s a lovely site, it’s a five-minute walk from the church and there are no toilets. So it happened a couple of times and it was okay but it didn’t quite do what we wanted. Meanwhile, Messy Church had taken off so well we put all our energy into encouraging that.’
But it was an itch that wouldn’t go away, and one day Hannah saw a Facebook book post about the new Messy Church initiative: Messy Church Goes Wild. ‘I thought, Oh! That combines both things!’
One of my churches in Worcester Park has a nice graveyard space and I tried a couple of outdoor sessions there.
Graveyards brimming with life
It’s been estimated that if you put all UK churchyards and land together in one place, they could create an area the size of a national park. So the fact that many churches, messy and otherwise, are rethinking the care and use of their graveyards could have a profoundly significant impact on the future for UK wildlife. A point not lost on Hannah.
‘One of our other churches, St Dunstan’s, in Cheam, has a nice big graveyard,’ she says. They’ve also got a hall with a toilet and a big space inside the church if it’s tipping down with rain. So talking with the team rector, around October last year we decided to try it. We applied for a start-up grant from Southwark Pioneering – just a small one, £400 – and used that to buy the books and a firepit. I’d always had a vision of having a firepit!’
The rector of St Dunstan’s did an outdoors taster session one Sunday, and from that eight adults came forward to help. This was key. ‘Once we had those eight adults,’ Hannah says, ‘we thought, Yeah, we can definitely go with this, and we put six dates in the diary. So now over this year, we alternate monthly between indoor Messy Church and outdoor Messy Church Goes Wild.’
The fact that many churches are rethinking the care and use of their graveyards could have a profoundly significant impact on the future for UK wildlife.
Snails and marshmallows
Messy Church Goes Wild meets on Saturday afternoons and has been popular from the outset, with 40 people turning up for the first session. Marshmallows were involved! And clay snails… ‘It’s a big churchyard so my plan is to always have a hunt around the churchyard. I’ve made some clay snails that they were hunting last time, thinking about the theme of journeying. We made maps out of things we foraged and we made seed bombs.’
About two thirds of the people who came to the first session had been to Messy Church before, so for them Hannah needed to explain how Messy Church Goes Wild is different. ‘And it is different!’, she says. ‘Our Messy Church Goes Wild is only an hour long, rather than two hours like Messy Church. And we start and end Messy Church Goes Wild together, whereas with Messy Church people just trickle in. I think that will take a bit of time for people to get used to. But I was determined. If we never start on time people will never get into the habit!’
Other differences include offering four activities in Messy Church Goes Wild rather than eight, as in Messy Church, and the time is always fixed at 2.00–3.00 pm, ‘so that in the winter we always have the light’.
Marshmallows were involved!
The real value of Messy Church Goes Wild
The feedback both from participants and helpers has been very positive, but what does Hannah think is the real value of Messy Church Goes Wild?
‘For me,’ she says, ‘there are certain children I know who don’t like Messy Church. Often because of the noise inside. Especially in our busy ones, if you have 90 people in a hall, it’s a bit intense. So the idea of having something outside that would be more accessible for people with sensory issues like that was one big thing.
‘I find nature relaxing, and I don’t think I’m the only one, so finding something that is relaxing for the children and for adults is important, and then also tying in with the whole thing about the environment and caring for creation. That’s a big thing in schools, it’s a big thing for children, and for parents if they’re paying attention. So having something that deals with some of the issues and is not a spreadsheet is really valuable.
‘Nothing that I did, or plan to do, is explicit. It’s not, Oh, we’ve got to save the environment! But ideas about the care of nature – that this is God’s world – run through it all. And you can’t do firepits inside, and I like a good firepit!’
I find nature relaxing, and I don’t think I’m the only one, so finding something that is relaxing for the children and for adults is important.
A consistent community
And looking ahead, Hannah has a real vision for Messy Church Goes Wild:
‘It’s tied to our overall vision for children and families: which is that people have a regular place to go. We want people to find a standalone community so that even if they don’t come on Sunday, which most of our people don’t, we want to have enough things happening during the year that it could be a consistent community, that it’s not just diving into one or two things, it’s a regular thing that they can really identify with.’
