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| Some of our kids at the Retreat! |
At our Retreat, we focused on the story told in Mark 5:1-20 about Jesus casting out the Legion of demons into a herd of pigs. Our theme: Sometimes the Pigs Must Die. Dramatic, yes. But I once heard a speaker ask the question - after telling the story from Mark 5 - "what pigs in your life or in your church need to die in order that the good news of Jesus might be proclaimed?" 8 years later, that question still haunts me. I ask myself all the time - is this ministry a pig or is it telling others about Jesus? Does it need to die in order that something better might come along?
We had some great discussion about pigs at our church that might need to die. It's important to note that we were clear - pigs can be ministry, programs, and especially attitudes, but not people! :) We weren't calling names! Ha!
But there were quite a few attitudes identified as pigs - attitudes of fear, complaining, gossip...and a good one, apathy.
Now this pig didn't come up at the retreat, but I see it all the time in most churches. We have this idea that the best way to do things is to separate out children go here, adults here, youth here...and every so often we'll get back together - but for the most part we all stay apart. Case in point - Sunday worship. Kids squirm and talk during church so let's put them someplace where they can play - or even learn good things - while the adults worship. Kids are happier, parents are happier - how can this be anything other than good?
Folks, I hate to say it - but this kind of attitude? It's a pig. And you know what needs to happen to pigs, right?
In a few weeks our kids will be leading our worship services for Children's Sunday. They'll lead the congregation in professing our faith with the Apostles' Creed and lead us to pray the Lord's Prayer together (among other things). Anyone remember how you learned the Lord's Prayer? The Creed? Chances are - if you grew up going to church - you learned these things simply by hearing them every Sunday until you couldn't help but know them. We learn by doing. We learn by experiencing. And our kids cannot learn to worship unless they experience worship.
But we don't just see this pig during worship. We're even seeing it during Messy Church! What's our motto for Messy Church - exploring faith TOGETHER. What usually happens during Messy Church? Kids dive in to the activities and parents stand around a chat. On the one hand, it's great to see everyone together and everyone having fun. But as long as our parents are doing one thing and the kids are doing another, it doesn't matter if we're all in the same room - we're not exactly exploring faith together, are we?
Now some parents are helping with Messy Church activities - and that makes it hard to go with your kids. We're excited to have more and more volunteers stepping up who wouldn't have kids participating in Messy Church - so that parents don't always have to be the volunteers. But still, we've got to kill off the pig that's keeping all of us separated by ages! We're in this faith journey together and we all have so much to learn about God - so that, like Legion in our story from Mark 5, we can go and tell others what amazing things God has done for each of us! And the more we do this together, the better foundation we give to our kids as they grow! Not to mention, we adults still have plenty to learn ourselves!
Our next Messy Church will be October 5 at 9:45am. We're moving back to Parker Hall (our Fellowship Hall) for this one because hopefully they will be working on putting down a new floor in our gym. There will be plenty of greeters to point the way to Messy Church. October 5 is World Communion Sunday and that will be our theme. Fair warning - there will be several activities that parents and kids will have to do together! (We're going to work on killing that pig...one Messy Church at a time!)See you at Messy Church! Invite a friend!
