Story for ToolShed;
At St Edburgha’s Yardley we have set up a Messy Church. We started in September 2025 so it is still very early days but we have seen growth. Our first session happened to land on the same day as local historical committee event. Whilst we were initially disappointed with nobody coming in the first 40 minutes. That quickly changed as 3 families came through the door and participated in each of the activities. Whilst they did enjoy the session they wrote on their application form that they lived to far away to regularly commute. So a good first session but disheartened. As the CFME I had taken it upon myself to hold a lot of the planning and responsibility so that volunteers could attend and get a feel for how the session would look.
With only a month between the sessions I recontacted schools and volunteers approached families known to the church. We met as a team to reflect and build on each other’s responsibilities. The second session we only had one family but they were brought along by their grandfather who worships at St Edburgha’s and he expressed his interest in becoming a volunteer. I had prepared the talk, however I had not done a talk to young children before as my previous roles had been as a youth worker. So I set the scene, communicated as best as I could but I knew this wasn’t hitting the spot for these two young people. We debriefed as a team after and they had the same feeling but the session itself, the craft and the food had gone well so we left feeling content.
For our third session and final of 2025/ as of writing this story. We had a team of 5 volunteers (including the grandfather). We were feeling more confident as we’d met a few weeks before to plan and prepare, we each knew what one another was doing. One of our volunteers who has far more experience with young children than me offered to do the talk which was secretly ecstatic about knowing my own ability was limited.
She absolutely smashed it! All of the children listened, they engaged and they responded to her questions and activities. I was so happy and she has volunteered to do it again in January. Another volunteer has been smashing the food, making amazing soups. The whole team does such a great job of engaging families and children when they come through the door and so the crafts.
We all look forward to seeing this ministry grow in 2026