You may remember in a previous article mention of Forest Church. Well, whilst researching this topic I came across the newest version of the same, called Mossy Church. This subset of Forest Church is aimed at more junior members.
I discovered what I thought was a big Mossy Church event an hour and a bit away from us. It transpires in my excitement of reading Mossy Church Great Outdoors event I had failed to see that the ‘o’ in Mossy was in fact an ‘e’! (www.messychurch.org.uk)
That aside, all of us bar Debbie who was working, headed off to Fairthorne Manor YMCA family campsite where the event was happening. We were greeted by enthusiastic marshal’s (of a different kind!) who registered us and directed us to the different activities available.
Firstly we made a family banner using a plastic sheet. On the sheet we made our mark with muddy boots, berried hands and wax crayons. Then a cross of cane was lashed together and banner tied to it.
After a slow start we headed off to the woods where there were a number of activities, starting with whittling. The whittling was to demonstrate “…as my Father has taught me so I teach you”. (Each of the activities were associated with parts of God’s story).
The other activities we managed were, den building (tabernacles in the wilderness), mud faces on trees (all people of all ages and all backgrounds), making bread coated with honey (manna in the desert), making musical instruments (praising God in the wilderness). The children were quite reluctant at first to get involved until Abi got stuck in. (Isaac declared at one point with a scowl that ‘I am not going to get messy!’)
There were many other activities but we ran out of time as everyone was called across to join the celebration with songs around a massive log fire in a circle. There were three main storytellers, two of which came from nowhere out of the crowd and engaged us in the story.
The whole session was finished with the Lords prayer with actions followed by a meal, a choice of two soups a hot dog and shared cake. Although it wasn’t quite the feeding of five thousand outside – around 300 was pretty substantial!
I hoped that we might have had some other campers joining us as a family but no takers. We stayed on and survived a brisk frosty night under the brightest English starry sky I’d seen in a long while!