Why?
We wanted to make some NOISE!
We’re a loud bunch at Grangewood Messy Church and we wanted to use our voices, bodies and instruments to make a beautiful (and MESSY) noise for God!
We based all the crafts and the celebration on Psalm 150.
Welcome – 10 minutes
We copied this brilliant flame creative colouring sheet (as we couldn’t print it in A1!) Kids, parents, helpers came around it and coloured it in together. Some of our older members finished it off for the rest of the session!
Crafts and activities – 50 minutes
Squawking Cans
We found this in the Extreme Crafts for Messy Churches book. They make an awful noise, but the families LOVED them!
Wooden Spoons
We added some extra danger to this activity by letting the families use hand drills for this! We only let children age 8 and above use the drills, and parents had to supervise. Under 8s, the parents got a go! Here’s a how to!
Rocks Begin to sing
But some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!”
“I tell you, He answered, “if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.”
Even the rocks want to cry out of God’s goodness!!
Kazoo
Sadly no pictures of these, but the families loved them! We actually ran out of combs! Here’s some instructions.
Everything that has breath action song
We used this video and asked some of our Messy teens to put together a bunch of actions for this song that they could teach during the celebration.
Crunchy foods
We got together a bunch of the most crunchy foods we could think of… Crisps, Malteasers, breadsticks, honeycomb… and more.. As the families crunched into them, we got them to think of how good God is, and how we can praise Him through EVERYTHING.
Praise Piano
Our church, like a lot of others in the UK, have many pianos! A piano for each room almost! Sadly one of our piano’s had gone completely out of tune, and was unusable. I HATE waste so begged the property committee to let me keep it for a while! So after a day of sanding and painting our piano was ready to become a PRAISE piano!! The families were allowed to draw all over the piano praise prayers to God, needless to say, they LOVED it.
Celebration – 20 minutes.
After our Welcome and Crafts and Activities we go into a time of worship, which we call the ‘Celebration’.
As people are coming in we always have a Fischy Music song playing.
Welcome
We start by welcoming everyone, asking people what they’ve done today in Messy church and what they’ve enjoyed.
Worship
We sometimes have both of our worship songs at the beginning of the celebration and sometimes one to begin and one to end. This time we had only one to begin with.
We started with the Messy Teens teaching the actions to Everything that Has breath – Matt Redman. We cut the song at 2mins 30secs.
Story
Print out the lines of Psalm 150. Cut them out into separate verses and hand them out to the family groups. Ask them to read out their lines a verse/group at a time (in order.) Get them to talk in their family groups about what they have to praise God for.
Prayer Activity
For the prayer activity, we decided to get SUPER LOUD.
We asked for the families to feedback what we can praise God for, then quickly wrote them down. Then we prayed them…
LEADER : God you are awesome for making this wonderful world
EVERYONE: (Hitting instruments and shouting) LET EVERYTHING THAT HAS BREATH PRAISE THE LORD.
LEADER: God you are great because you made me and my family
EVERYONE: (Hitting instruments and shouting) LET EVERYTHING THAT HAS BREATH PRAISE THE LORD.
Etc etc… this went on a few more times and got louder and louder, it was awesome!
We always finish our messy celebration with the Messy Grace with actions which can be found in the Messy Church books.
Food – 30 minutes
Then we come together for food! We always do party food as we meet on a Sunday afternoon. Families generally help us tidy away which is great!
This theme was used at Grangewood in February 2017
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