The Great Big BRF Mess-About

At BRF, home of Messy Church, we just want to help you do what you do even better. Here’s a project to ask your team about: The Great Big BRF Mess-About!
Sometimes it’s the small ideas from other churches that can really help us do our Messy Church better – serving tea in travel cups with lids… the tarp that covers the carpet wall to wall… the prayer tree… the Peace Room. And sometimes the new ideas can take us in a new and exciting direction: ‘We’d never been brave enough to use hammers and nails, but then we saw Jan do it at St Splogget’s…’ ‘We always thought we had to dumb down the Celebration, but then we saw how focused the families were when Colin invited them to be quiet and reflect for a moment…’
The Great Big BRF Mess-About is simply an excuse to visit other Messy Churches in your area and to invite them to yours. We all know it’s a good idea to do this when we start, but after that, the months go by, we’re all so busy and we forget to keep in touch with our Messy friends a few miles away. We sometimes have no idea of the difficulties they’re going through that we could pray for and maybe help out with. We don’t have a clue that they are revolutionaising the Methodist Church by their amazing family prayer scheme that’s just what we’ve been looking for. We might have forgotten what godly, wise, generous people they are, whose very presence is a balm to our troubled souls. (As is ours to theirs. Maybe. On a good day.)
Whether it’s to give your tired team a boost or to be inspired by different ideas and attitudes; whether it’s to put down the foundation stones of friendships in order to grow something bigger between you in the long run; whether it’s to follow Paul’s advice in 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10: ‘Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.  And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia [or Yorkshire or Cornwall or Skane or New South Wales or Quebec]. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more.’ (NIV).
You’ll find everything you need at http://www.messychurch.org.uk/resource/great-big-brf-mess-about: free attractive invitations to put online or send out by post and thank you cards with space to fill in your reflections. (Use the link rather than trying to copy the pictures on this blog post.)
How many churches will join us in inviting others to enjoy The Great Big BRF Mess-About?