The theme for September’s Messy Church was “The Cornerstone”.
We met as usual At All Saints’ Church, and what fun we had! Breakfast as ever was greatly enjoyed by all. This month we had bacon and sausage as well as fruit juice, tea, coffee, cereals and toast, ably prepared and served by our wonderful catering team, Sue, Adele and Clair.

The activities were concentrated on buildings. Michael and Daniel supervised the large cardboard box tower construction, which suffered from numerous onslaughts by small children. Cardboard boxes are some of the best toys in the world, enjoyed by all ages, especially Mums and Dads and Grandads.
On one table, there were different bases on which to try to build a Jenga tower, sand, pebbles, loose rocks and a Bible. The Bible proving to be the best foundation, ably demonstrated by Simon.

Mary was in charge of the sticky option, where melted Maltesers were used to make Malteser towers…very messy, but surprisingly successful, as well as the rejects being delicious.
Heather and Clair helped everyone to make paperchain people, and Alan created a human knot of people which managed to sort itself out in the end…

All the activities were relevant to the Bible story which was taken from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, who were a group of young Christians in what is now modern Turkey. In Chapter 2 verses 19-22 Paul explained to his readers that the Church is like a holy building which has to be built on a firm foundation. This foundation needs a cornerstone as do all buildings if they are to withstand the onslaughts of the weather, time and attack. Just as those early Christians had to have the firm foundation and cornerstone to build up their Church, so do we. We are part of that building, we are the living stones that still have to be joined together to make up the Church, but unless our foundation has the cornerstone of faith which is Jesus, we will end up like the man who built his house on the sand, rather than the man who built his house upon the rock.

We finished with the prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you that today, as always, you are there as our cornerstone. Thank you that we can rely on you to be strong and to help us not to worry. Please help us to make you the most important thing in our lives. Amen.

The next Messy church is on Saturday October 14th at All Saints. We would love to see you there.