More than 60 people gathered across two venues for the Messy Church Goes Wild Roadshow. In partnership with the national Messy Church team, the events were hosted at St John’s Wellington in the morning and at Yew Tree Farm, Kingston Seymour in the afternoon, allowing people from across our diocese to get hands on experience some of the new ‘Messy Adventures’ material.
Messy Church Goes Wild is the movement within Messy Church which aims to encourage Messy Churches to meet God outdoors, love the natural world, experience a sense of awe and wonder there and to be more eco-aware in all we do.
The roadshows took place outside with a variety of activities to try including; seed planting, soil testing, cloud watching, experimenting with different tools to replicate how birds feed and searching for bugs and wildlife in the environment around us.
Jules Perry from Minehead, who has already tried some of the ideas with toddler church, said, "I was most intrigued by the cooking outdoors station, having had a penchant for open fire cooking for as long as I can remember. I picked up a host of new techniques and ideas for future culinary experiments."
Andy Levett from the Go Team commented, “Taking groups, activities and worship outdoors has become a big thing for many of our churches – big in popularity but also big in helping people connect with God through nature. It was great to see so many leaders, many of them with their own children, exploring this possibility as well as sharing stories of the things they are already doing.”
After gathering around the fire in celebration, reflecting on the Parable of the Mustard Seed and being encouraged to tread lightly on the earth, leaders and their families were sent out with these words of blessing: "Wherever you go, walk lightly, wherever you go, shine brightly, wherever you go, hold tightly to everything true and pure and good, both daily and nightly. In the name of Jesus Christ…"
The Messy Adventures resources are free to download from the Messy Church website and also available to buy as a book
Below are video highlights of both events.