While Messy Church is popular among all sorts of people, I was still rather nervous about placing it for discussion before the students on the summer school of the Theological Institute of the Scottish Episcopalian Church. Not being a theologian or an ecclesiologist, I panic when the depth of my ignorance is revealed. (QED I spend much of my time panicking.)
And as soon as I got to know the students a little, I realised that here was a group of people I respected and admired and I knew I would be upset if they poured cold water on the idea of Messy Church, as their good opinion was worth having.
Interestingly, the Messy Church sessions were happening in the context of the wider theme of interfaith dialogue: maybe there is some tenuous link with Messy Church about learning from people whose outlook on life is very different from our own.
I needn’t have worried. The conversation was positive and open, informed, warm and receptive, and an email from the Director of Studies afterwards kindly told me the students were unanimous in their enthusiasm for Messy Church and were still talking about it in the Epilogue session at the end of the week. Messy revival in Scotland?
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