Messy Revival!

Just a very quick update this evening. Our last Messy Church in September had the lowest uptake since we started the event some time before I even arrived in Swanvale Halt in 2009 - just twelve children. Today we had 43 children and some 80 souls altogether, which is the highest figure since about 2015 (I think) and the second-highest attendance ever. Completely unaccountable!

Getting Together

Two single mums get talking at the Messy Church tea, just when we were despairing that it was our worst-attended Messy Church ever. They decide it would be great to create an occasion for single mums generally to get together and Sheila who organises everything to do with families at Swanvale Halt church agrees to book the church hall and be there as a responsible person. At 5.15 on evening last week they turned up and began. Sally our Pastoral Assistant baked a cake: it was huge but all disappeared. There were eight young women and ten children. One bought board games and three women sat with a Scrabble board for two hours. 'I didn't have to do anything apart from buy some food' said Sheila. Something to serve a group of people we don't normally reach, spontaneously arising out of our contacts: it's the kind of thing I've waited fourteen years to see happen. 

Move 'em On, Head 'em Up

This Saturday's Messy Church was the worst-attended we've ever had, even more than the one we forgot (all right, I forgot) to tell anyone about. Blame the hot weather, which meant that nobody much wanted to venture out of doors after a week of the children sweltering back at school: there were virtually tumbleweeds rolling across the village streets. 

Among those bold souls who did turn up, though only as we were packing everything away, were Andy our local beat constable and a colleague, just checking in to see how everything was going. In fact, as far as antisocial behaviour is concerned, everything has been quite quiet for the last few weeks. "Yes", agreed Andy, "we think we've managed to stir things up a bit. The older individual who hangs around with the kids and who we're most interested in knows we're trying to make his evenings a bit less comfortable. Of course", he went on, "that just means he now spends most of his time in Guildford. And Guildford will probably move him on to Woking eventually".

"Still", said his colleague as she looked across the church to where the Messy Church collage had just been put up, bearing the theme of the day, "Sharing is Caring".  

Well It Was Your Loss

Is there any end to the Coronation? Our Messy Church concentrated on that theme yesterday, and all the children's crafts focused on making bits and pieces of the regalia (including cloaks made out of patches of red velvet which we happened to have been given some time ago), culminating in them having their photographs taken sitting in the Bishop's Chair. This is an impressive 18th-century bit of furniture which we have acquired somehow, and as it is viciously uncomfortable it's highly suitable to support the bottoms of bishops. For one granddaughter of the manse, it was clear, being photographed in a crown with royal regalia in either hand just confirmed the view of the world she has had all along, and I suspect she wasn't the only child for whom this was the case.

Hardly anyone came. We eventually worked out that this was almost certainly because of the rival attraction of a major village fair not far away, especially as the weather had been grim in the morning and lovely after lunch. Providentially this turned out not to be a bad thing as making the kit was so complicated any more children than we had would have been still constructing crowns as darkness fell. 'This is the best Messy Church I've ever been to', said Lottie. So there.