Lydia Harrison is the children and family work enabler in the Goole and Selby Methodist Circuit. There are five Messy Churches in the circuit and Lydia also volunteers with the Messy Church national team as a reader and writer and prayer team co-ordinator. ‘Prayer’ she says, ‘is completely integral to all of that’, so who better to talk to about the Messy perspective on prayer.
‘I pray about everything I do. I pray as I’m setting up for Toddlers. This morning, I was praying for each of the families I thought might come today and for any new people. I prayed over the Tuff Tray which today was filled with coloured rice and shamrocks. They loved pouring the rice and by the end of the session, there was rice in every corner of the room. When I was sweeping up I was praying that God’s love had reached every person who came in the same way that the rice had got into every nook and cranny.’
Lydia is involved in three of the five Messy Churches in the circuit: ‘One’s quite big, but it’s not a traditional Messy Church; it’s more like a holiday club so it’s a drop off for children. The other two are quite small, but in Barmby all the families in the village come to so we get 10 families each time. It’s a tiny village in the middle of East Yorkshire, but they’ve come now for six years, as long as I’ve been here, and wow!, it’s a real community. We all care for each other, and they’ve really taken ownership as well. So it’s lovely to see that change: this Messy Church is our church.’
Lydia encourages her Messy Church helpers to cover every session in prayer: ‘We start every planning meeting with prayer, and we end with prayer, and then we make a commitment to pray for the organisation and the families who might come in between sessions. We often pick an activity specifically that we can pray with. It could be making a collage. It could be hanging prayers on a tree. Or it could be saying in general conversation, maybe over tea time, ‘What can we pray for you this week until we see you again?’
And how do people respond to that invitation? ‘I think the more they get to know us, the more open they are.’
So how does Lydia sum up the ‘Messy perspective on prayer’? ‘Prayer is seen as the foundation. So when the national prayer team meet every month, we’re praying for the whole community across the world. People send in specific prayer requests, but everyone says we’re doing this this month, can you pray for us? We’re trying something new. We’re having a bit of trouble. Please could you pray for us? Throughout the worldwide Messy community, prayer is understood as the foundation for everything we do, and it’s absolutely essential that we pray about all things, lift all things up to God. We don’t always get to know if our prayers are answered, but we have faith that we’re making a difference.’
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