Once a month, Messy Church takes place in the main hall instead of regular Sunday worship. From 9:45 am, you are welcome to Eat and Meet for a chat, hot drink and some toast. Messy Church begins at 10:30am in the hall while a regular Sunday Service takes place in the main Church.
The next Messy Church takes place on 23rd April 2023
Here's what we get up to at Messy Church:
Sunday 22nd July 2018
Our focus today was on Psalm 139 vs 14 “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
We started off by talking about how wonderful God’s creation is - the seas, the mountains and rivers, the countryside and
all the wonderful things that fill our world. We speak of this beauty often but rarely of our own God-created beauty. Instead we often focus on what we perceive to be our inadequacies.
So all our activities today were looking at how wonderfully are bodies are made.
We asked people to come up with three words that describe themselves. Funny, loyal, helpful, 
caring we’re just a few. Then we went on to see if we could put different organs/ bones in the correct place on our volunteer.
We then went on to decorate small mirrors so that could notice how wonderfully God has made each one of us when we really spend time looking carefully into the mirror.
After this we went on to our edible activity. We all had to make either an edible creature or face. We had roll out icing and various sweets to make these. This was really to show that God has made each of us to be different and unique. There is, never has been, and never will be anyone exactly like us.
Then to finish off we made glasses out of pipe cleaners - we are proudly wearing these in the picture above! The glasses remind us that we can see more of who are creator God is when we look at the things he has made.
Join us for our next Messy Church after the summer break on 23rd September.
Sunday 25th March - Messy Palm Sunday!
Our Palm Sunday started off with us all joining together to sing songs of praise outside on our church steps as a witness to the people of Pudsey.
We then went back inside and we started by thinking about different 
kings and rulers. We had 13 crowns with a different name on and we had to match the country to the king/ruler. The only king we didn’t have a country for was Jesus as this was to prove that Jesus is a different type of king ruling over a different kind of kingdom. As one of our young people said “ He’s just in charge of everything”.
After this we went on to hear the bible story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem and we had to cheer and shout hosanna when we heard certain words. We then went on to make palm branches out of newspaper and when these were completed we sang Hosanna, Hosanna while we paraded round waving our branches.
Then we went on to make a cross out of marshmallows as we always like to have something to eat. To finish with we marked a cross on paper with masking tape and then we had to decorate the paper. When this was finished we took the masking tape off and the cross stood out against the colourful background. We concluded by singing The Servant King.
Sunday 25th February
Our theme for the morning was The Woman at the Well
We started off with the story and it had actions for us to join in with. It told us of the woman who was asked by Jesus for a drink. The woman was surprised at this and was even more surprised when Jesus told her that he knew everything about her. He knew that she had done some things wrong but he still wanted to offer her living water. The woman was so excited she ran back to the town and told everyone. Lots of people from the town went to the well to see Jesus for themselves, to listen to him and to take the living water he was offering.
Today Jesus still says to us “ Come and drink the living water I am offering.”
For our first activity we made clay water jars to remind us of how the townspeople would have needed to carry their water in big water jars and how the water had to be drawn from the well to fill the jars.
Next we went on to make “Edible Wells” 
using a bun filled with blue icing to represent the water with a small roll as a bucket and a sweet lace attached.
In our prayer corner we had ice cube prayers. We had to place an ice cube into some water and then watch it melt. As it did we had to think about how much Jesus loves us and knows us, whether we are sad or happy or hurting or content.
To finish off with we had “Sweet conversations”. Each person in the groups had to pick a smartie from the tube and then find the matching topic on the list. Then they had to talk about it. This talking reminds us of the woman at the well and how she changed by talking to Jesus. It’s good to have conversations: amazing things can happen!
Come and join us for the next Messy Church
on Sunday 25th March.
Sunday 28th January 2018
Our theme today was Jacob's Dream
Our session was to help us grow in Christ by opening our eyes to the spiritual dimension of life, as represented by the angels in Jacob’s dream, and seeing angels as God’s messengers, helping Gods kingdom grow on earth through Jesus.
First we had the story about Jacob, telling us of how he was jealous of his twin brother Esau. As the eldest, Esau knew that one day he would inherit all the good things that God had promised his parents. Jacob was very angry about this and he did nasty things to his brother and he also lied to his father and tricked him. It was then in a dream that God spoke to Jacob telling him that he had a wonderful plan for him. He told him that he would be with him always and that was a promise. When Jacob awoke he wasn’t scared anymore as he knew he wasn’t alone. Jacob told 
God that he would love and trust him as long as God kept his promise. He didn’t know then that God always keeps his promise.
We went on to making Jacob's ladder with the angels going up and down. The groups had to make the longest ladder they could in ten minutes using all the recycling materials they were given.
We created three very different ladders!
Next we went on to make some people puppets. On one side we had to have an angry or miserable face representing Jacob when he wasn’t a 
very nice person. Then on the other side we had a happy smiley face showing how Jacob turned his life around to be how God wanted him to be.
We enjoyed making our edible Jacob's ladder using a chocolate bun, a curly wurly and some candy floss to represent the clouds and with jelly babies representing the angels.
To finish off with we drew around our hand and cut it out. We had to write on it a promise to God, for example I will promise to be kind to everyone. Then we tied some wool around our little “pinky” finger to make it into a pinky promise. We know that sometimes we may make a pinky promise but we don’t always keep it, but we know that God always keeps his promises and they mean even more than a pinky promise.
Sunday 26th November 2017
Getting Ready...
Today in Messy Church, we were thinking about getting ready and being prepared. We asked everyone what had we recently had to prepare for - bonfire night - and we considered, what did we do? We had to collect wood for the fire, prepare food, buy fireworks. We got the surprises when the fireworks were set off. We don’t know what’s going to come out of them until they are lit.
Some of us have already started preparing for Christmas by buying presents, making Christmas cakes and writing cards. Preparation is important. We know that Mary and Joseph had to prepare for the long journey to Bethlehem - how would they travel, what would they take with them?
Our story today was about the ten bridesmaids. Each of them had an oil lamp and they were waiting for the bridegroom, but they had to wait a very long time before he was ready and five of them had not prepared their lamps. Their oil ran out before the bridegroom was ready and they couldn’t see anything in the dark so they couldn’t join the bridegroom at the wedding.
This parable tells us that if we want to be ready for Jesus when he comes again, we need to give our hearts to him and ask him into our lives. We must be ready.
So our first activity was 'Splat the Rat'. We let the “rat” run down the tube and we had to hit it as it came out at the bottom. This was a surprise as you didn’t know when it was going to come out!
Next we made cards that had a spring inside and when you opened the card the spring with the picture on jumped out to surprise you.
We went on to thinking about Christmas preparations and how people make Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings. We made some truffles that looked like Christmas puddings and they tasted delicious!
We ended saying Thank you to God for his promise of Jesus, and asked him to help us to be ready and waiting for His coming again.
Sunday 22nd October 2017
Jesus Light of the World
This morning we had a pumpkin themed programme focusing on All Saints' day and the light and good things in our world (rather than Halloween).
We had a story running through the session about a pumpkin who found that his, and the other pumpkins, lights were very dim and they didn't know what to do to keep them shining.
They tried to huddle together to keep warm and bright, but it didn't really make much difference. Eventually our pumpkin realised that if 
he helped people and shared his light, his flame became brighter and stronger.
"The pumpkins have been giving away their light ever since.
And the strange thing is , the more they give it away the brighter it seems to glow.
So let us be like the pumpkin and let our lights shine".
We started off by passing the pumpkin around the hall while singing 'Shine Jesus Shine' and when the music stopped we took a sweet out of the pumpkin.
Next we went on to make Prayer Pumpkins where we wrote names 
of people or places which need our prayers at this time. We then put a (battery operated) candle inside them to let the light shine on our prayers.
Our last activity was to ice a pumpkin shaped biscuit.
The children also received a Meaningful Treat box to take home.
Sunday 24th September 2017
After the Summer break it was lovely for Messy Church to come together again and focus on the theme of the Centurion's Faith from Luke 7vs 1-10.
We started off this morning looking at and talking about keys. We have keys for everywhere - the house, garage, office, church and many other places. Most of them we found we use every day, but some hardly ever. This led us onto one key that we never think about and that is the key of faith.
Today we have been looking at the miracle of the centurion's servant. The centurion used his key of faith to unlock the power of God. Our crafts were therefore based around the centurion.
First we made a centurion's helmet and we talked about how the Roman 
soldiers were trained to think of themselves as better than others, especially with regard to the Jews.
Next we went on to make a Faith bookmark which reminds us that we can learn true faith from the centurion.
Lastly we made a lollipop centurion.
This was certainly a really busy Messy Church and everyone enjoyed the activities. We are looking forward to coming together again on 22nd October.
Sunday 23rd July 2017
Our theme today was John the Baptist. We learned that through Isaiah it was predicted that John the Baptist would come and prepare the way for Jesus. John's job was to prepare people to accept Jesus as God's son.
We started off with the story from Isaiah about John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It tells of him baptising people in the River Jordan. It talks of him wearing clothes made from camel hair and eating locusts and wild honey. Every time we mentioned certain words the children had to change places with someone else while shouting " New life for all".
We then sang 'Our God is a great big God' with lots of actions.
We went on to make insect biscuits to remind us of the locusts. We all wondered what the locusts would have tasted like, but we were glad ours were made from jelly beans!
Next we went to our prayer corner where we had a large picture of a beehive. We put some yellow paint onto the hive to represent the pollen, and as we did this we talked about how pollen 
changes into honey and how Jesus can change us to be nicer people.
We also had breadsticks to dip into honey so that we could taste it .
After this we made some lovely doves to remind us of how the Spirit descended on Jesus 'like a dove' and that the Spirit is for everyone.
Our next Messy Church will be on 24th September - Come and join us!
Sunday 25th June 2017
Today our theme was The Lost Son
The son in the parable made a choice: he took what he thought was important and went on his way, a path that led him away from his 
father, a path full of sin and discomfort. He ended up so hungry he even wanted to eat the food given to the pigs.
So what did he do? He decided to go back to his father. His father wanted his son back no matter what he had done. So when he saw him returning he held a great celebration to welcome him home. As far as he was concerned, his son was lost but now he was so relieved to see his son alive.
God feels like this when we take our eyes away from him, when we get lost in our sinful natures and turn away from him. He longs to welcome us back, to forgive us and give us shelter and spiritual food to sustain us.
Firstly, in our activities, we made garden gates to remind us of the father waiting at the gate for his son to return.
Next we talked about getting ready for a party and what we have to prepare. We made fruit kebabs and then we also made some smaller ones and had a chocolate fountain to dip them in. This reminded us of the great feast the father held for his lost son.
We then made an obstacle course and our young people had to walk round it without knocking anything over. They received sweets for doing this, but then they had to do it again blindfolded to see if it was as easy, and if they knocked anything over they would have their sweets taken away. This was to make comparisons with the son's journey to and from the pigsty.
We then ended with the following prayer:
Heavenly Father, you call us home even when we run away. You look out for us, even when we can see no way to go. You celebrate our return with a feast beyond compare. Thank you that whatever we do, we can never go from your Spirit, can never flee from your presence.
Amen.
Sunday 28th May 2017
Today we brought the regular Sunday service together with the monthly Messy Church session 
in the main hall to consider the theme of creation.
We began by singing 'He's Got the Whole World' while simultaneously throwing/passing a globe ball around the hall.
We then thought about the colours of the rainbow. We formed a rainbow by standing in line in the colours that we were wearing. Despite it being summer, yellow was in short supply (we had to improvise by using a pair of scissors!).
While standing in our rainbow, we stepped forward for each statement about how much water we had used over the last few days. This made us realise how much we take water for granted and how much we do in fact actually use.
Our first creative activity was to create a paper fish using a weaving technique. We then created an animal of our own choice using a pipe cleaner. Please do see the Messy Church photo album for more pictures.
We then moved into prayer. The prayer plate was decorated with lemons, Smarties, jelly babies and bread. Each food helped us to focus our thoughts and prayers.
We began with the lemons and prayed for the sourness/sharpness in our world. Our prayers were with the people of Manchester and with those who have been hurt or lost loved ones there this week.
We prayed for other people (jelly babies), we prayed in thanks (Smarties) and we prayed for all those in need (bread).
After our final song, 'O Give thanks to the Lord, all you people', we said a final prayer together.
It was really lovely to come together as a whole Church family to experience Messy Church. Thanks to everyone who joined us.
Sunday 23rd April 2017
Our theme today was based on the story of Mary anointing Jesus and how we should and could honour God and what have we to give Him.
We started off by singing "Father Abraham had many sons" and this got us all moving with the actions. We then heard the story of Mary going to Jesus' house and wanting to do something special for him to show that he was special to her. We heard that she took her bottle of perfume and went to Jesus and carefully poured some of it onto his hair and onto his feet. Jesus looked at Mary and smiled at her and said "Thank you". Mary was really glad that she had taken something special to Jesus.
We then went on to talk about praying, asking the questions Do we find it easy to pray?, Do we sometimes forget to pray?, Could we do better?. We made a Prayer rock to put at the side of our beds to remind us to pray at bedtime or when we wake up.
Next we went on to make a smiley face Pizza and this was linked to asking what is the most delicious food we have ever tasted. Most of us said it was something that had been made by someone else for us, especially Sunday roast dinners, showing that as Mary wanted to do her best, we also want to do our best for others.
Next we went on to make a 'heart in God's hands'. We folded our paper and drew round one of our hands. Then we cut it out and found that when we opened it, we had a heart shape held between two hands. On the small cut out heart we had to write or draw the name of someone or somewhere we were thinking about especially today. On the hands we wrote about situations in our community or in the world that we would like to place into God's hands.
To finish we had some bowls of warm water into which we poured some lavender oil. We poured the water over each other's hands to remind us of Mary anointing Jesus.
Sunday 26th March 2017
As it was Mothering Sunday we started off by asking everyone What does your mum do for you?
Some of the answers given were: She feeds us; she tidies our bedrooms; she cares for us; she drives me mad!; she gives us hugs and kisses and bakes cakes.
Then everyone was given a heart shaped post-it note to write on one thing a mother is and we placed these on the outline of a mother.
We read from Matthew chapter 6 where it tells us not to be worried about the food and drink we need in order to stay alive, or about the clothes we wear. He tells us not to worry about these things as our Father in heaven knows that we need all these things and he will provide. Just as our mums love us, Jesus' love is even stronger.
We then went on to make small posies of daffodils to give out in church to all the mums and ladies in the congregation.
Next we made a heart to give to our mums. We decorated them with jewels and then placed a chocolate bar inside.
We ended up by singing Jesus' love is very wonderful.
Sunday 26th February 2017
Our theme today was hidden treasure and we began by reading Matthew 13 vs 44-46, which talks about the kingdom of heaven. We asked people to consider what was worth more than anything to them and the replies included: health, family and faith. 
We then had an exciting Ping-pong Pearl challenge game. Six ping pong balls had to be transferred from one dish to another by sucking through a straw.
Next we made Oyster biscuits with a pearl in the middle. We asked everyone to consider if they had ever found anything precious, how they felt and what they did with the precious item.
We then enjoyed a treasure hunt. There were 3 different set of clues hidden around the building which everyone had to use to find the treasure.
This led on to our next activity which was to dig in the sand and try to find a chocolate coin on which it would either say Person, Place or Object. These were thank you coins and we had to write a thank you to God for someone we knew, or for somewhere that is special to us or for something that is precious to us.The focus of this was to show all the things that we are thankful for.
We listened to (and watched Ronnie act out!) the parable about the man who found some buried treasure and the parable about the man searching for fine pearls.
To finish with we sang Lord, you are more precious than silver, followed by this prayer:
Dear God,
Thank you for the treasures you have given each of us. We are so blessed. Please help us to remember that no matter how special these things are, nothing is worth more than living a life with you.
Amen
Sunday 22nd January 2017
Our aim today was to practise listening to God.
We started off by talking all about the sounds we hear every day. Sometimes noise can be so loud we don't always hear what people say. We had a game of Simon Says to see if we were listening to the instructions properly, or maybe not quite hearing what was said.
We then talked about ways to make people hear better - such as by using microphones, hearing aids etc and we made our own megaphone.
We listened to the story of Samuel (1 Samuel 3) and had actions to do as the story was read out. The actions were as follows:
- When we heard the name Eli, we had to stroke our chins as if we had a long beard
- For Samuel,we had to raise our heads up with a smile
- When we said Lord, we had to make an 'L' shape with our forefinger and thumb
- When we heard the word sleep, we had to pretend to go to sleep
- Every time we said called, we used our megaphones
We then were given a small picture of an ear with the words "I am your servant, ready to listen" and on it we had to write about an area of our lives we would like to hear God speaking to us.
These were then put onto a larger ear shape for us all to share.
Having talked about Samuel being asleep when he heard the Lord calling, we then made beds for Samuel and we placed a jelly baby in the bed and covered it with royal icing to make it look like a blanket.
We then talked about the fact that people spend a lot of time plugged into 
their mobile phones or other devices and we asked the question " What could we do to spend more time plugged into God?". We then decorated biscuits to look like heads with ear phones on them.
We finished off by singing I, the Lord of Sea and Sky followed by prayers telling us that in today's world, life is often very busy and it is sometimes 
hard to find time to sit and listen. We believe God still speaks to people today - in lots of different ways - but it is not always easy to hear his voice among all the other voices that surround us.
Sunday 27th November: 1st Sunday in Advent
This morning we were thinking about communication. We began by asking how we can communicate with others and there were a lot of good answers - letter writing, telephone calls, texting, facebook, e-mail, telegrams, morse code, sign language, semaphore - to name but a few!
We heard the story of the angel coming to Mary with the message she was going to have a baby. We had various Christmas cards around the hall, which were cut in half, and the children had to find the other half to the one they were given and then they had to decide if the picture was a true Christmas story or a non-Christmas picture. The outcome was that there were more non-Christmas cards than true Christmas ones.
As we made angels, we considered how Mary received the message from the angel Gabriel telling her she was going to have a baby.
We then designed our Christmas biscuits with a message before colouring paper angels. The idea was that we thought about someone who may be alone or ill or we might think of a place in need of God's love. We wrote names on the angels and then put them on our prayer board as a "Heavenly host of Angels".
To conclude we came together and sang 'Go tell it on the Mountain' which was followed by the bible reading: Luke ch 1 vs 26 - 35 The Birth of Jesus Foretold. We then prayed together:
Loving God, thank you for the special message the angel gave to Mary. Thank you for sending your Son, Jesus, into the world. Thank you that Jesus is Emmanuel - God with us. Please help us to keep Jesus at the heart of all our celebrations this Christmas.
Amen.
'Come on and Celebrate' was a perfect song to end our morning.