crafting
Potato Head
meadow and stream
frog
prayerbox
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| | | Messy Church - 29 September 2019 |
Report by Joan Cape
Messy Church on the afternoon of September 29th found us thinking about harvest in a special way.
 As
we looked at the parable of the sower (Luke 8), we thought about our
Messy Church leaders telling the folks who come along about God and
what it means to know him. They might hear the same things from
other people; perhaps they read them in the Bible as well. These things
are like seeds which get planted in our minds. The seeds are
stories about Jesus and as we learn more the seed grows and gets bigger
until eventually we know enough about God to be able to tell others
about Him.
If we hear people talking about Jesus but don't
understand, we need to ask questions. If we don't ask, we forget
what we learned and our seeds are like the seeds that fell on the road,
to be eaten by birds. The seed will be gone from our minds.
Sometimes
we learn something about God and are excited about it at the
time, but don't learn any more. It helps to read
Bible stories and pray, and go to church if possible. Doing any
of these things helps our friendship with God to grow.
If we
don't learn more about God the seed doesn’t grow: it’s like
the seed that fell on the stones. It grew only for a short time
and then died.
The next seed was choked out by the thorns.
This is what happens when we start to worry about things (our parents,
our friends, our “stuff”). Our worries become more
important than the seed, and it dies. We need to pray to God
instead of worrying!
The last seed fell on the good soil, and grew
well. If we learn from what we hear at Messy Church, the seed in
our minds will grow. We’ll be able to tell others about
God, and God will be a good friend. Instead of growing a garden,
we’ll be helping others know God and making his kingdom grow.
Our
activities helped us explore the parable. First, everyone helped
to tell the whole of today’s story, by following instructions to
paint, draw, glue, or colour in part of a large collage. By the end we
all knew what the story was about.
 To
try planting seed, we threw balls (seeds) into boxes: some landed on
“good soil”, some were eaten up by birds or choked by
weeds. It wasn’t easy to sow the seed in the best places!
Folding
a sheet of paper and colouring it the right way gave us some wonderful
bird puppets: as we did this we thought about the things that make us
forget what we learn about God. Then we decorated a biscuit to
represent part of the story. There were some very imaginative designs!
Our
Grace jars will remind us to say “Thank you” to God for
what he gives us, as we put a penny in our decorated pots and
thank God for your meals.
Using card, an empty CD case,
seeds and beans and glue, we made pictures (a cross or a heart) to help
us remember that we need God in the centre of our lives, and that we
can help others by sharing his love. We took time to talk about
how we might do this.
Then we had fun making vegetable people
and tractors from toilet tubes and bottle tops. As we did so, we
thought about how we can make better use of what we harvest, with less
waste.
In our time in church we were encouraged to think about
the story and ask God to help us look after our seed better, talking
about how we can do that. And then it was back to the hall for tea of
pasta followed by fresh fruit.
Look out for Messy Church on 3 November.
Published - 19 November 2019
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