Liturgy

In the last e-news we asked if anyone was doing anything interesting with liturgy. Karen Gardiner emailed from Elstree:
I’m responding to a note in the Messy Church newsletter asking if anyone had any experience working with Anglican liturgy and Messy Church together, and I thought you may be interested what we have been doing.
For the past school year, every week during term time, we have a Messy Mass after school on a Wednesday…
In terms of ‘Messiness’ we are rather simple compared to most – we normally only have a couple of activities on offer, because of our limitted resources and the fact that we’re doing it every week. Our food and drink is at the end, and again is very simple – just what people happen to bring!
Throughout the liturgy, we move around the church, and I have consciously made sure that everything is interactive – from the entry where we all light candles, to the songs – to which people can contribute not just by playing instruments but by adding their own words, to the confession (where we dip our hands in the font), to the offertory etc. etc.
On Pentecost Sunday, a number of our children were admitted to communion. … We tried to create a service that was accessible to both the Messy Mass and Sunday congregation. In fact, there were many Messy ingredients (though the chief of these occurred in the ‘sermon slot’ where we all engaged in many different activities)!
I hope that this may be helpful/ interesting to you.