A Dark and Stormy Night

The signs are all down marking the end to another Messy Church Sunday. Yesterday we focused on the story of Jesus walking on water, as told in Matthew 14:22-33. Hopefully the kids understood that Jesus can calm the stormy seas and that he is trustworthy - so we have nothing to fear!

We learned a few lessons this time - as we always do - not just about the Scripture, but also about putting on Messy Church. For example, last minute changes to activities can actually be good! We had to make a few adjustments to our science experiment...mostly because we didn't quite realize how much corn starch it would take to get kids to be able to "walk on water!" As in about $100 worth of corn starch! So we went with the gloop in a bowl for the kids to play with - and it turned out to be the biggest hit!

Here's how the storm jar was supposed to look!

I also had one of those great Pinterest moments - you know, when you look at this picture of this really great craft, read the directions and then later realize that's totally not going to work. Then you discover that to use the sand, you have to wash the sand first?! What?! Wash the dirt?! Yep.And none of it turns out how you thought it would?  And yet, it ends up being a favorite craft anyway!

Speaking of favorites, our last minute activity addition - the wind thingy - turned out to be a good one, too! It was really inexpensive, easy to make, and yet when we did the story (both at Messy Church and in worship later), these were really fun and effective! Which brings me to another point - this Sunday during our 11:00 worship (the service that follows Messy Church), we used the same Scripture lesson for worship as we did in Messy Church (because our pastors are awesome and love to connect MC and worship!). This time in worship, though, we told the Scripture lesson "Messy Church style." The whole congregation was in on the story - some as waves and some as wind. What a joy to look out over all those smiling faces as they helped tell the story together! It was a wonderful moment!

Another thing we learned - if you put on the Messy Church t-shirt (that our volunteers wear), you will get asked to help! Our wonderful District Superintendent, Mary Teasley - that's her on the left - came to give Messy Church a try on Sunday. She walked in the door with her MC t-shirt on and promptly got asked a question by another volunteer and had to go off to find supplies for one of the crafts. So be careful when you wear that t-shirt!



Here are a couple of other pictures of crafts we did, including the treat bags we made for that afternoon's Fall Festival.

Many of our children will be hitting the streets this week dressed up for Halloween and trick-or-treating. We saw many of them at our Fall Festival - and boy, there are some scary costumes! Zombies, bloodied up characters, witches and more...Halloween brings out the cute - but also the scary! It's important for our kids to remember that while Halloween can be fun, with Jesus as our Savior, we have absolutely NOTHING to fear! C.S. Lewis (he wrote all the Narnia books!) once said, "Since it's so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." Our kids will always come up against scary things and many storms - we can't stop the storms as much as we might try. So the least we can do is to make sure that they know they do not have to be afraid because we worship a God who can calm any storm, who can conquer any storm, and who can all us out onto the water to do amazing things.