Messy Chrch eXtra

Laura Meleleu writes:
I have been running Messy Church at St Paul’s Church, Woking since January 2011 and we have had loads of families come along and join in the fun! Last year, we started to think about what we could do for some of these families in order to take them deeper in their faith and take them a step further in their relationship with God.
So we decided to try out Messy Church eXtra, which is kind of a follow-on from Messy Church. We do it once a month, usually a fortnight later than Messy Church (we have MC on the 3rd Tuesday of the month, and then the Messy Church eXtra follows that on the 1st Tuesday of the next month). We use the same theme as what we’ve done in Messy Church and they come as a family. It’s only for an hour and we don’t have food (just drinks and biscuits). We start with drinks, biscuits and toys out, just like Messy Church. Then we move into another room and have an intro to the theme, for example, a drama, story, puppet sketch or similar, then talk about that briefly. They then go on to a table as a family, and have an activity to do as a family, which is related to the theme, and they then each have a sheet to do – there are four sheets for different ages (under 5s, 5-7s, 8-11s and a sheet for the adults too), which has activities to do and things to discuss together as a family to do with the theme. We then all come back together, talk about what they’ve learnt and wrap it all up with a song and a prayer.
From our experience, we haven’t had many families coming along, but I don’t know whether that is linked to the fact that we’ve had a big turnover of families in our MC, and so some of the people we were originally aiming it at are no longer around.
So, the reason that I was emailing was because we have been thinking that there must be other Messy Churches who are looking to do something similar, and as I produce all the sheets each month, we have been wondering whether you would be interested in having a look at the material, and seeing whether there would be any mileage in compiling it into a resource which other people can use as a follow-on from Messy Church.
If you’d be interested in the Messy Church eXtra material, please contact Laura on kids@stpaulswoking.org.uk