Observing a "Messy" Lent

Wednesday brings the start of another season of Lent. So how do we help our children and families observe this holy season? Lent can be difficult - far more difficult than Advent - with all the talk of giving up something, taking on something, talking about Jesus' passion. But without observing a season of Lent - of preparation - Easter can easily lose its powerful meaning. If you don't recognize why Easter is such a big deal, why celebrate it with such passion?! Messy Church is hands-on - so how will we observe a "Messy" - or hands-on - Lent?

This past Sunday, our Sunday School classes helped prepare our kids for Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. We gave all the kids a really cool Lenten Calendar from the website catholicicing.com. Here's the link: http://catholicicing.com/printable-lenten-calendar-for-kids/ - She says its her most popular download of all time on her blog. I can see why. It's a great tool for walking through Lent with kids!

During the children's message, we "buried the Alleluia" for the season. I had a banner that says "Alleluia" which we've put in a box and tied it up, not to be opened until Easter. It's one of those children's messages that might have sounded better than it turned out - but we'll see. There's something pretty neat about having that box with the "Alleluia" up front, tied up - a great visual reminder of the season.The kids got to help hold the banner and put the box on the altar table.And we'll pull it back out on Easter and hopefully have it displayed throughout the Easter Season.

These are just a couple of things that we've done as a church community. But families can also observe Lent at home. There are plenty of ideas online (how did we survive without Pinterest?!) from making a Lenten tree (very similar to a Jesse Tree during Advent) to suggestions for things to give up or take on. One of the ideas I really loved was 40 bags for 40 days - decluttering the house, cleaning out the excess. Here's one person's list:

 With all the good ideas out there for observing Lent as a family, what will your family do during these 40 days? How will you celebrate this season and prepare your family and your homes for Easter?

What's in a name?

Well this blog post is a long time coming! But then church life isn't just messy on Messy Church Sundays! For our last Messy Church event we combined Old Testament and New. The jump off point was Exodus 3, when Moses is talking with God at the burning bush. Moses asks for God's name and God says, "I AM." Here's our fun (and somewhat messy) painting/coloring activity. Kids colored the picture, but used paint and a straw the make the burning bush.

We then looked at four of the times Jesus says, "I am..." when trying to show his followers who he is. In John, Jesus uses 7 "I Am" phrases - we concentrated on 4 of them.

"I Am the bread of life." John 6:35 Kids made an ornament that looks like a slice

of bread with the Scripture verse on it. They also got to make their own biscuit from scratch, measuring each ingredient from start to finish. We baked the biscuits in batches so each child was able to eat the one they made. The kids had a lot of fun with this - and the biscuits tasted pretty good, too!

"I am the Light of the World" John 8:12 For this one, kids made a pretty cool flashlight out of a cardboard tube, some duct tape, and yellow paper. We also found some actual flashlights with the Scripture verse on it so the kids could take them home. I learned the hard way on this one to check to see if the flashlights came with batteries! They didn't...oops. Live and learn!

"I am the Good Shepherd" John 10:11 For this one, the kids were able to make a game to take home with them to learn about what it means to be a good shepherd. This blogger -  http://thevanderkoddes.blogspot.com/2013/10/week-7-moses.html - had a great game idea about baby Moses that I ran across looking for Moses activities. We adapted her game to make it about the good shepherd. It probably took too long to put together - but it was a good take-home activity. We also had a really cool paint project with this one involving marbles (the wandering sheep). This was messy - but oh so much fun. The kids loved it - and even our littlest participants could do this one and turn out an amazing painting.

"I am the vine." John 15:5 Our last "I am" statement was about the vine. A simple, but very cute, activity with
grape/pom-poms was a good reminder for the kids.

We had a great turn-out for this Messy Church event. We even had a special guest join us. Mr Jerry, who is one of our youth counselors here, dressed up for Moses for our Fall Festival. We asked him to reprise the role. So Moses was wandering around chatting with the kids during the activities. He stuck around for story-time, too, as we told the story of Moses encountering God at the burning bush.

We have one more Messy Church event for the school year on April 6 - a Messy Lent that also includes a hot dog lunch and Easter egg hunt after our 11:00 worship service. It will be a busy day with Messy Lent at 9:45 (in the gym this time), worship, lunch, and egg hunt.

It may be the last one of the school year, but have no fear - Messy Church will be back, maybe even in time for Vacation Bible School!!

A Messy December!

Whoever decided that two Messy Church events in December would be a great idea is crazy! (Well, it was my idea...so I guess I'm the crazy one!) We finished one this past Sunday and started immediately to deal with the next one on December 22! Ahhh, the joys of December...

But first, to focus on our last Messy Church...It was all about Advent. On the one hand, it could have been very difficult to plan specifically for Advent and to not jump straight ahead to Christmas. Maybe that's one good thing of having another Messy Christmas event later in the month. It made us distinguish between the season of Advent and the season of Christmas. And it turned out great! This might have been our best Messy Church yet! The crafts and games were a hit and we had a wonderful turnout. We even had a visitor who had been at our Milk and Cookies with Santa event the Thursday before Messy Church - we had fliers that doubled as coloring sheets.

The biggest hit might have been the ring toss Advent wreath game.The kids loved it. It will be making a return appearance on December 22! We knew having a few more games would be good - this one was simple but lots of fun.

Our crafts were also a hit this time, thanks to some wonderful volunteers who came up with great ideas! We had an Advent calendar that was a paper chain with Scripture verses to read as family for each day in December. It was a simple craft (though took some time to make) but it is a great way to get our families reading the Bible together. One of our members also turned it into a different kind of countdown - countdown to her baby!

We had a really cute craft making a nativity set for kids to take home and play with. All I can say is "Thank goodness for Pinterest!" We also had the kids make chrismon ornaments like the ones on our tree in the sanctuary. It gave us a chance to talk about the symbols and what they mean. This was another simple craft - card stock, gold glitter, and glue (it was the messy one, though, along with decorating sugar cookies!) - but the kids loved it and it was a good teaching moment.

We also did an Advent wreath - yet another simple craft that turned out so well! It really was beautiful. The picture of the craft is one done by one of our 4-year-olds, even the writing. We were all really proud! It was construction paper, glue sticks, and some markers!

Did you catch the theme? I didn't even realize as I was typing how many times I said "simple." But this Messy Church really was all about simple crafts and games that turned out great. I do think that sometimes we forget that sometimes the best things are the simplest - construction paper, glue, crayons and a bit of glitter can make almost any kid happy! And maybe our Advent lesson is in there, too - simple can often times be better, even in this season of craziness and excess.

So now it's on to Messy Christmas coming up on December 22. This one is taking the place of our "family friendly" Christmas eve service. Plans are coming together - but watch and listen for announcements about this one. For now, though, please note that we will be collecting canned goods/food for United Ministries as the offering for this service. It is an Aldersgate tradition to give the Christmas eve offerings to United Ministries. We thought that the food goods will be something good for the kids to see and participate in. So consider purchasing some extra food and bring it on December 22.

I Can't! I just can't do it!

The alternate title for this post could easily be, "Yet another reason why we need Messy Church."

I had the joy of facilitating our Children in Worship time for the K4-K5 group this past Sunday. I had a larger group than usual, but as usual, they cracked me up. We talked about what we looked forward to most about Thanksgiving. The unanimous vote is the turkey. Although I wonder if we don't love the anticipation of the turkey more than the actual turkey... but that's another story. And I've wandered off topic.

After I read them a Bible story, I gave them each a can of play dough with the simple instructions of make something that has to do with the story we just shared. I read the story of the lost sheep and the lost coin. One child asked if I wanted them to make all 100 sheep. I said "Sure!" He said, "maybe we can just make 10?" Some of the kids got right to work. Let's just say we started with a lot of, "Look I made a coin!" Ha! Smart kids! But this is also where I think Messy Church becomes so important...

Like I said, the sheep weren't perfect!

When given a blob of play dough and asked to create, I heard several cries of "I don't know how" and even worse, "I Can't!!" And that makes me sad! I didn't ask for anything specific and I certainly didn't ask for anything to be perfect. I simply wanted them to have the freedom to create in response to the story. And that scares many of our kids. There are no instructions, no steps to follow, and no expectations. Just try it! See what happens! And if you don't like it, how easy is it to start over?! None of our play dough sheep were perfect by any stretch, but perfection wasn't the point. But I really hated hearing "I can't!" from 5 year-olds!

We need kids to have as many opportunities to create something out of nothing. To build something from scratch and imagine. To try something, smush it up, and start over. To learn from mistakes and not worry about perfection or even following instructions. It's how they learn to problem solve and how they grow into adults who create new things and imagine new solutions.

As we plan for Messy Church events, I hope one thing we do is give kids the freedom to be messy - not perfect - and reward them for their imagination. I hope we give the opportunity to create new things. And I hope we never let kids get by with saying "I can't!"

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.

Storm's a Comin'

For the past two nights I've been dreaming about sand, waves, and shells. Sounds idyllic? Maybe dreaming of a beautiful beach somewhere - peaceful, tranquil? Nope. Because add to the sand, waves, shells the following: corn starch, glitter, duct tape, rice, toilet paper rolls, bottle caps, oil, and jello. In other words, I haven't been dreaming about beaches - I've been dreaming about Messy Church!! That can only mean one thing - it's Messy Church Week!
I've been shopping for supplies and I can honestly say, I've gotten some very strange reactions from the cashier at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. At Sam's I bought several huge tubs of corn starch.
Apparently she had seen a TV program about a lady addicted to eating raw corn starch. So she wondered about me. I said, no, I won't be eating this...we've got a science experiment to do. And then the lady at Wal-Mart questioned the large container of glitter. She asked if they didn't have a smaller container. I said, no, I wanted to the largest container they had - because I know my kids! We will need the glitter!
It definitely is the oddest assortment of supplies. Individually, they don't make much sense - that's why I've been getting all those strange looks. Even on the floor of my office they don't make sense.But I know that on Sunday morning at 9:45, these random supplies will come together in amazing ways.
Isn't that like the Church? We're a pretty random assortment of people - and yet, when we're about Kingdom work, we come together in amazing ways. As Paul tell the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 12) all the parts and pieces are needed - even the ones that seem the least important. Everything works together and the Church is at her best when all the supplies are there, when all the pieces are working together. We may be Messy, but we can do amazing things in Jesus' name.

Don't forget to invite friends and neighbors to Messy Church! It's going to be a Dark and Stormy Night on the Sea of Galilee. Wait, is that a ghost? Nope. It's Jesus!!

Taking one for the TEAM - the Next Step for Messy Church

We are 25 days away from our 2nd Messy Church event! On October 27, we welcome kids and families for another exciting Messy Church. And this time things are going to get really messy!

But even as I send out information for our volunteers as we prep for October 27...it's time to take the next big step for Messy Church @ Aldersgate.

Up until now, Messy Church has been one person coordinating, organizing, dreaming, etc - with volunteers working on one Messy Church event at a time. But it's time for us to create a Messy Church Team. This team should have between 5 and 12 volunteers who are committed to dreaming, planning, and executing Messy Church @ Aldersgate. From planning the themes, finding the activities, coordinating volunteers, marketing, promoting and dreaming big, messy dreams - this team can help Messy Church run and help it grow.

Who should be on this team? Adults who are passionate about creating exciting spaces for children (and their families) grow in faith. And youth who are passionate about the same thing!

This is not a light commitment - it's a commitment to a ministry that will take time, energy, and prayer to execute. And fair warning, this team will need to meet on a regular basis (probably once a month). If you are interested in being a part of the Messy Church Team at Aldersgate, please call or email me (244-1820 or jmyers@aumcsc.org) and let's chat.

The more hands we have on deck to help, the bigger mess we can make - and the bigger impact we can have as we spread the good news about Jesus, the Christ, to children and their families in our community.