Messy Church 19th May 2012

The theme for this Messy Church was "Pentecost" which celebrates the coming the God's Spirit to the followers of Jesus.  Pentecost is often referred to as the "birth of the Church" as the follower and believers became empowered to spread the message, teaching and love to Jesus throughout the world.

This Messy Church felt like the most successful one to date, with many people of all ages coming along and joining in the fun.  The cake stall was as popular as ever and along with donations for tea and coffee, raised enough funds to keep this event free to all.

Enjoy a few of the pictures of the event and if you feel like you may have enjoyed it, why not pop along to the next Messy Church.

Before the main activities start, people are welcome to play with Lego, colouring or tea, coffee and cakes

The busy and popular Cakes Stall

Introducing the theme to all

Cooking has became a great favorite at Messy Church.  One of the affects the believers had on those who listened to them was they they all understood what was being said, regardless of where they came from.  To reflect this, we cooked sweet pretzels.

Living up to the name of "messy church"

Another craft activity was making a "Pentecostal Worn" to pin on a jacket or shirt.  This was made up of coloured beads threaded on a coloured pipe cleaner.  Each of the bead colours represented part of the Pentecostal meaning.

The Colours represented: -

Red for the fire of Pentecost

Orange for the touch of the Holy Spirit

Yellow for Jesus, the Saviour of the world

Green for the love of God

Blue for the people of the world

Smile for "go forth and tell others!

Still using colours to represent the flame of the Spirit as it touched each of the followers, the chance to decorate a "hand" with coloured ribbons was also popular.

The Cross is a well known symbol of the Christian faith and has many styles.  People were able to decorate a "window hanger" cross to take home.

Hope you have noticed, Messy Church is an "all age" activity.

Painting with marbles, to remind us that the Spirit moves around everyone and everything.

For those who do not want to get too messy, colouring pictures to remind us about the Pentecost story is one for them.

As the weather was kind, we were able to have some craft outside (helps reduce some of the clearing up afterwards).  On offer was hand printing on a paper bag (useful for holding the craft items), a hand print pentecostal picture and bubbles.  The paint colours were red, yellow and orange to represent fire and the bubbles reflected the wind that was heard when the Spirit first came in to the believers.

One of the other crafts also reflected the "wind" of Pentecost and that was making your own windmill.

At the end of the morning, most of us gathered together to let poppers off to give one last reflection on the arrival of the Spirit.  We even had a big popper, as shown below.

And finally, it is Messy Church, after all!