Who is God?!

The first Messy Church of 2011 to be held at Redgate Primary School was a roaring success! 35 new people joined our regulars in creating fabulous pieces of art and craft based around the theme of "Who is God?" We even had a group of visitors from Rwanda who joined in with the various activities used to show different aspects of God. The school hall was positively buzzing with excitement and it was wonderful to experience such an uplifting atmosphere.

The Activities

As always the different activities were designed not only for enjoyment but also to promote thought and discussion about God and our faith.

Painting an invisible God:
Just because we can't see God doesn't mean He isn't there. He is everywhere and always ready to listen to us and help us. (Matthew 28:20)
This activity involved drawing a picture of God or what God means to us, using a colourless wax crayon. The picture is revealed by painting over it because the wax repells the paint.


Making a pasta tree:
God made the world (genesis 1:11)

Here we explored how God makes all the wonderful trees and plants grow. Using pasta and tissue paper we made our own trees and plants.

Decorating heart shaped biscuits:
God loves each one of us( John 3:16).

One of the Messy Church team baked lots of lovely shortbread hearts for everyone to decorate. This was a very popular activity, we had some lovely creations but they didn't last very long!

Making a crown:
God is our King (matthew 21:5).

Using coloured card and lots of sparkly decorations we made our own crowns. There were some beautiful crowns created and our friend from Rwanda made a particularly lovely one.

Making a Dove Mobile:
A dove is a symbol of peace and God gives us peace (John 14:27).

This activity, although quite fiddly, produced some lovely results. I'm sure there will be lots of people feeling peaceful when they look at their dove mobiles.

Bible Table:
Many different types of Bibles; traditional, comic strip, youth and story bible. This was a great opportunity to have a look at lots of different types of bibles, discuss your thoughts and colour in some bible story sheets too.

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Flower arranging:
Gods creation is wonderful: flowers, trees and the whole earth made by God (Genesis 1:31)

This was a very popular activity and we saw some very beautiful arrangements.

Making a shield:
God protects us (Ephesians).

Protection is just one of the many things that God does for us. This task asked us to think about all the different things that God means to us and then draw or write them in the different sections of a shield template.

Free play :
God loves us .

It was lovely to see our families getting to know one another and enjoying each others company whilst celebrating God.

The worship
After an hour of activities, we began our time of celebration and worship with our welcome song. Our regular Messy Church goers are really getting good at this one.

The talk, this time, looked at all the different things that we had made during the activity section and how they related to God and his love for us. To show just how big and great God is, Lesley told us that despite our universe being too big to imagine, God's love is so much bigger!

After the worship, we tucked in to hot dogs followed by an assortment of delicious cakes! During the supper we were able to enjoy a special time of fellowship which included birthday celebrations and lots of chat.