Fall Festival TODAY!!

Join us this afternoon for our Fall Festival! The weather is beautiful and the candy is bountiful!

Grapes, I Love Lucy, and World Communion

This past Sunday, we had the pleasure of celebrating World Communion Sunday at Messy Church! What a great opportunity to help families learn about why we celebrate Holy Communion - but also to remember that we are not alone! Christians all over the world celebrated this sacrament together. That's almost mind-boggling if you really think about it.

Our craft project this week had the kids decorating a chalice to remember the Lord's Supper. The craft was simple but the kids had a wonderful time. Word from one grandmother was that her granddaughter carried that chalice around with her the rest of the day on Sunday! The cups are simply plastic wine glasses from the party store. They used permanent markers, gem stickers, and some fun international stickers we found at the Dollar Tree.

For our snack time, we encouraged families to sit down together at one of the tables we had set up. Families received some pita bread and grape juice - enough to share with all of the members of their family. We had a reading for them that helped to tell the story about why Jesus gave us the important meal. Again, a simple activity - but it was absolutely amazing to watch families sit down together for this experience. We had several families with 3 generations present, learning about Holy Communion together! Wow - this is exactly what Messy Church is all about!


For a little silliness, we of course had to have a game!  Families competed against the clock to see how fast they could set the table!(Disclaimer, this might have been the parents' favorite activity - we earned serious points for teaching kids how to set the table properly!!).

To focus on the "world" part of "World Communion," we had a prayer station for families to learn about children all over the world and to pray for them. Our church has a family that is currently serving in Thailand as missionaries so the kids made cards of prayers and encouragement for that family. In the picture here, one of our kids is showing on the map where she and her family will be heading to serve as missionaries in the coming months. It really was a special moment, reminding us all how big God's world is!

 And finally, we just couldn't resist. We stomped some grapes into grape juice! Lots and lots of grapes! This was the activity that the adult volunteers worried most about. When I sent out the email asking for help for each activity, I had plenty of people offer to help but most emails included "but not with the grape stomping!" One volunteer emailed me to ask how exactly we were going to crush those grapes. I simply asked, "Have you not seen I Love Lucy?" Ha! Still, I had a few volunteers - including someone volunteering with Messy Church for the first time! - willing to help with this messiness. Turns out, it really isn't as messy as people feared as long as you are well stocked with towels and baby wipes. The kids had a blast and our pastor even got in on the fun. She did a great Lucy impersonation! (We did learn a few lessons with this activity. Take the grapes out of the refrigerator the night before. We took them out the morning of, and they were oh so cold! It was like stomping on ice cubes! Also, don't forget that you'll have to take all of the grapes off of the stem so you don't have kids stepping on sharp little stems. This takes some time - but it's a great way to get little ones involved setting up for Messy Church.)

All in all, we had one of our best crowds for Messy Church and we had an absolute blast. Even better, I've heard from several parents and grandparents who came away raving about how much they had learned.

Our next Messy Church is a very Messy Thanksgiving, coming November 23. And then it will be time for Messy Christmas!!