Messy Scripture

Messy Church has been going at Swanvale Halt for over four years now and has built up its own clientele, or congregation as we are supposed to think of it. We always tell ourselves that, in theory, for some people who come, children and adults, it's the only faith and worship input they have. Not everyone: plenty of our regulars are pretty embedded members of the worshipping community, while others belong to other churches around the area. Nevertheless, the statement that for some people Messy Church is 'church' does hold true.

We had a Messy Church gathering yesterday. The theme was 'good neighbours' and one of the helpers devised a quiz (or two, one for adults and one for children) asking them to pair up the different sets of 'neighbours' mentioned in the Bible.

After everyone else had gone into the church hall for tea and cake and I was clearing up, I found one young mum sat on her own pondering the lists. 'I recognise some of the names', she said. It turned out she didn't have a Church background at all, but had been reading Bible stories to her daughter, who is 6. 'I ought to know more about them', she went on, 'But there are so many names and you lose track'. I draw no particular conclusions from this, only that here is one person who is obviously interested and thoughtful, and equally obviously doesn't know very much about Christianity, but is there at all because her daughter comes and does crafts, sings a song and eats cake.