International Messy Church Meetup

After the main Messy Church Conference in June, some of our key international leaders, together with Aike, Jane, Sally and Richard (CEO BRF ministries) stayed on at High Leigh for a time of fellowship, prayer, reflection and learning together. It was wonderful to be joined by 25 friends from 12 different countries (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, UK, USA).

We kicked off our time together with pre-dinner drinks on the Sunday evening, greeting each other in our heart languages. It was the perfect opportunity to mark Roberta Egli’s upcoming retirement from her role on the Messy Church USA leadership team. Roberta has been instrumental in leading and getting Messy Church started in the USA, after coming to the 2016 Messy Church conference. It was good to be able to honour this while we were gathered all together. After dinner we spent some time praying, both for the world (it had been a turbulent weekend internationally) and for the global Messy Church network, sharing the joys as well as the sorrows.

The next morning, we dwelt in the word using Matthew 28:16-20 (the great Commission) as our focus, hearing the Bible passage read in all the languages present in the room. After this each participant was invited to draw 2 pictures to represent ‘What’s Messy Church in your country like now?’ and ‘What are your challenges’. After much amusement about the artwork, it was then good to discuss the thoughts behind the drawings, sharing experiences, celebrating successes and identifying common challenges in Messy Church globally.

In our next session we explored how Messy Church adapts across cultures and what we could learn from one another. We came back to our drawing boards in the third session as we looked to the future, drawing pictures and then discussing how we’d like to see Messy Church develop in our countries over the next 3 years and how this might be impacted by broader changes and challenges such as sustainability of teams and finances, organisational changes and development and things like artificial intelligence. After one last feedback session we gathered for dinner enjoying the chance to cement in person relationships that had been forged in online gatherings.

We finished our time together by praying in groups for each person and sent each other out with a blessing from each country, after an inspiring and rewarding time gathered ‘All Together’!