Messy Church Helps All Ages Feel the Love of God By Melinda Shunk Children’s Ministry Coordinator
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t is the dog days of summer! Vacation Bible School is done. It is not quite time for promotion Sunday. Families seem to be hit and miss on Sunday due to traveling for summer vacation. Travel teams are finishing up those last summer games. Kids are at Tanako for a week of camp! What does a Children’s Minister do to reach out to those that may never come to church or know that one even exists in their neighborhood? Well, I’ll tell you what an eight-year veteran of Children’s Ministry like Jessica Butler of Sardis United Methodist Church would do: she gets messy! Two years ago, Jessica came across the book Messy Church by Lucy Moore and Jane Ledbetter. Messy Church is a combination of a lot of things you may already have and do at your church, but it is combined to become a multigenerational outreach blend of fun, shared experience, worship and food into one unique time of day. See, I told you it was everything you already do in ministry, just blended together! Jessica made a fun social media graphic called Mess-tival. She blasted it around town as well as went old school and put some posters in community establishments. She made sure to have members she knew would be at the event share the Mess-tival invite publicly for all who may want to join in the fun.
A young lady plays with some homemade slime during a Messy Church event at Sardis UMC. || Photo Provided by Melinda Shunk
Then with the help of Karen Guinn, they dug out tables and old supplies from every event they had over the last year. They set up a slime station, a tinkering station, water play station, and a few more tables all staffed with
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ARKANSAS UNITED METHODIST
ARUMC.ORG
