When I joined the Messy Church team in March as the Youth Project Lead for Messy Momentum, I hadn’t ever been to a Messy Church gathering, something I have quickly – and with much joy – put right, visiting three Messy Churches in and around my local area since. Each one has given me a warm welcome, plenty to smile about and a reflection on faith and community to take away and ponder.
In Kennington, I joined my first ever ‘Messy creativity’ table which turned out to be aimed at teens – this was just days after our two-day consultation for Messy Momentum in March where we had discussed this very idea as a pilot concept! Not only was I encouraged by this God-timing but moreover by the deep theological conversation at this table about communion, quite unlike any I have had in church for some time.
On Palm Sunday, I was quickly enveloped into Messy Church in Iffley, tasked with the registration desk to welcome others with the grace and warmth with which I had been welcomed. I was blown away by the celebration including an ‘Hosanna’ song led by a four-piece band – cello, doublebass, acoustic guitar and flute! The band’s debut was so well received that they had to provide an encore so the singing and actions could be repeated by all with much delight.
And in May at Headington Baptist Church our topic was Pentecost, where I sat with a small group of girls to build miniature rafts (and a bow and arrow, safely and surreptitiously!) and explore the idea of the Spirit as ‘a rushing wind’ in our sails.
The thing that has struck me most about these wonderful gatherings, each in a different place with a range of people, ages, backgrounds and expressions of faith but with the same core vision and values, is the same thing that struck me at our team time ‘dwelling in the word’ together last week, reading about the first Pentecost in Acts 2: ‘at this sound, the multitude came together … and they were amazed and astonished’ (Acts 2:6-7). The Messy togetherness – or church, or family, or community, whatever language we chose to use – of us all actively coming together to be Christ-centred and Spirit-filled speaks to and impacts people so fundamentally that when we first encounter it, like that historic day of Pentecost or just my small, first experience of Messy Church, it is truly amazing and astonishing to experience God in our togetherness.
For more wisdom and reflections on togetherness, I can recommend the newly revised and updated edition of Messy Togetherness: Being intergenerational in Messy Church by Martyn Payne & Chris Barnett, either in print or as a digital eBook
Or, if you’d like to hear more about our new project seeking ways to better enable our ‘all-age’ value, Messy Momentum, please sign up to one of our online launch meetings here.
Sophie Harber
Youth Project Lead
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