ISBN - 9780857460912
Three complete Messy Church sessions for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany,
together with a wealth of creative activities and crafts to extend the
range of excitingly messy activities for your Messy Church. Sections
include creative Christmas prayers, global action suggestions, games and
competitions, Christmas food crafts and many other ideas to take you on
into the New Year.
From the Introduction:
Through these three Messy Church sessions, a local church can help 21st
century families own the eternal messages of Christmas for themselves so
that seasonal tensions, sentimentality and material pleasures have a
chance to fall into a better perspective. The three sessions are planned
to run once a month on three consecutive months between November and
January to encourage families to keep coming back for the next thrilling
instalment and in order to have the chance to reinforce the learning and
provide echoes that will deepen the worship experience over the period.
Making things together - even simply making a mess together - can be one
way in which God's kingdom explodes into life in a church, a community,
an individual or a family. We're not just gluing and sticking: we're
reflecting the God who creates and recreates and gives us the chance to
be more fully human as we mirror his actions. Just as God wasn't afraid
to get his hands into the stuff of the earth, touch swaddling clothes,
skin, straw, smell frankincense and myrrh, taste milk and bread, the act
of making things gives people a chance to get their hands too into the
stuff of the earth, to give their senses a feast, to savour what is
good, to feel real things in a screen-based world. Craft time makes a
space to give adults and children the chance to have time together, to
enjoy being a family, to marvel at each others' skills, to help each
other, and it gives a 'third place' a displacement activity around which
conversations with friends as well as family can flourish. And alongside
the sheer joy of learning new skills, difficult Biblical themes and
stories can be explored in a non-confrontational way through drawing,
splatting, building and experimenting.
We hope your Messy Church will be a huge and happy gift to your
community this Christmas.
Publisher BRF
Paperback
96 Pages