Crossroads Church is based in the Parish of Earlham, as a growing and active church, we have a mission to reach out to our community in Earlham with the love of Christ to make a practical difference. A tagline we often use is to know Jesus, to make Him known and to do it together.
As a parish, Earlham is one of the most deprived in the country, with child poverty at 58%, Special Educational Needs extremely high and anxiety rife, amongst other alarming statistics. Despite this, there is a fantastic sense of community and togetherness within the area with pockets of hope, love and light all over.
On the 3rd Sunday of each month, at 2:30pm, we had an all age service at one of our church buildings right in the middle of a housing estate. It served a purpose to an extent, but lacked identity and direction and had become a bit stale. On arrival our new Incumbent, Rev. Sam Lees, suggested it could become Messy Church. He highlighted that he’d heard about the available microgrant and from his previous experience, thought it’d be a good fit. I had reservations. I’d seen Messy Church delivered pretty poorly, with the gospel message diluted heavily and the whole thing being quite one dimensional. From a personal point of view, I’d only ever perceived Messy Church as simply arts and craft based and I am embarrassingly bad at arts and craft. But after a few more discussions and a soft launch/trial period, I was convinced that it could work.
Following this, a few of us from Crossroads attended the Starting your Messy Church Masterclass and this really opened my eyes to what Messy Church could be and all the potential it had for this area and with the help of the microgrant and the free resources, our Messy Church is going from strength to strength. Numbers are up dramatically and we’re really building strong relationships with more local people as we see them more regularly, which has been fantastic.
In terms of the sessions/services themselves, it’d been really multi-dimensional, we’ve had drama, food based activities, sensory play, as well as arts and crafts, which haven’t been any where close to what I initially feared! The greatest joy through all of this, though, has been seeing people with very little church experience engage with the faith, developing a prayer life, learning more about the Bible, becoming more curious and asking more questions, becoming more trusting of the church and building their relationship with God more and more.
The application process for the microgrant was super simple and the Messy Masterclass was very helpful, I’d encourage anyone to explore what it could mean for them and their community!
Tom Woods, Crossroads Church
Could you be eligible for a Messy Microgrant?
Thanks to generous funding from the Church of England, we can offer a support package to CofE Churches in areas of need wanting to start a new Messy Church.
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