St. Luke's Messy Church - Three Years On

St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Edmonton celebrated three years of Messy Church on June 8.

Our final Messy before the summer break focused on the fruit of the Spirit of Jesus in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). We made fruit-kabobs and fruit mobiles. We wrote prayers on paper cut-outs of fruit and we hurled plastic fruit through the air with our home-built catapult.  We learned that – just like fruit needs soil and water to grow – the fruit of the Spirit grows in us when we put down roots in God’s word and soak in God's love through time in prayer. We had another fantastic meal together.

At the end of three years, we see a few things worth noting about Messy Church:

• It’s a lot of work, but a lot of fun. Doing it has taught us so much and brought team members closer together.
• It’s not just for kids! A lot of people still seem to think that about Messy Church. We see families come and love to welcome children, but seniors love it too! And a lot of the people who come back again and again are adults who – for whatever reason – don’t connect with traditional Sunday-morning-church culture.
• Messy Church is church. We now see a core group of people who come back month after month; people with whom we had no contact before Messy Church. For a few, it’s in addition to their Sunday-morning church attendance at St. Luke’s or elsewhere. For others, Messy Church is their church family.

The next Messy Church at St. Luke’s will be September 14, but we’re still here over the summer, so we’re inviting everyone to our third annual lawn dance on August 17! Dancers will have a lot of fun… and there’ll be activities for non-dancers, too. Stay tuned for details.