The Revd Clare Hayns, vicar of St Mary’s Church (Iffley, Rose Hill and Donnington), reflects on the first year of Messy Church and how the community taking part has grown with it.
“This is incredible – for the first time in for ever, all my children are occupied.”
This was from Jane who has 10 children and is one of our regular parents at Messy Church which is held in Rose Hill Community Centre in Oxford. Over a much-needed cup of tea Jane told me that Messy Church was the only thing that all her younger children agree that they enjoy.
While we chatted, the ballroom in the Rose Hill Community Centre was buzzing with activity – there were 25 children plus parents, carers and helpers, making it 75 of us in total. In one corner children were busily painting a giant picture of Noah’s Ark, on another table a group focused on making dove mobiles, while others roamed the hall on a treasure hunt.
What was remarkably different to when we first began Messy Church eight months earlier was that the buzz in the hall was calm, focused and purposeful. In our first session a few of the children spent the whole time racing round the hall, with one child with autism screaming throughout it as they were overwhelmed. That child still comes along, now using our Messy Church headphones to help him cope with the noise, and is much more able to engage.
We began Messy Church in January 2025 as a collaboration between St Mary’s Church of England Church and Rose Hill Methodist Church. Neither of us have very many children coming to our Sunday services, and we had found it hard to reach out to the many families who live on the Rose Hill estate. We considered alternating between our churches, but it made more sense to meet where most families live, and to use the modern community centre which is at the heart of the estate.
We were concerned the large ballroom might be a bit big if not many families came, but from the beginning we didn’t need to worry. We received some start-up funding from the Diocese and Methodist Circuit which helped us build up some resources and get some decent publicity printed, all of which helped as we began.
We have found our number have built up slightly each time we meet, and have a mixture of ages from pre-school, primary, and a few year sevens attending. Some of our children have considerable additional needs, and a number have English as a second language. We have been on a steep learning curve to make sure we can support them (such as providing headphones) which is ongoing.
We don’t meet every month, and have started out with six times a year, which has worked well for us, with a ‘Messy Church Goes Wild’ in St Mary’s churchyard in August. We have asked the families for feedback and this has been uniformly very positive; they all say that they feel very welcome and included, and several have highlighted how they value the range of activities, the sense of community and making new friends.
We have established an enthusiastic volunteer team, some of whom are very new to this kind of ministry, but who have found they love it. I particularly enjoyed watching one of our volunteers, a very senior police officer, crawling on the floor playing animals with a toddler.
I have been part of Messy Church in other settings but what I’ve found very different this time round is that we have an excellent volunteer with skills as a project manager. He organises us all sending out detailed plans of who is doing what, and when. This had been incredibly helpful and means that although it seems ‘messy’ on the outside, it’s actually very calm (mostly!) for those of us helping lead it.
While we were cautiously optimistic that our Messy Church would be successful when started out, we have exceeded our expectations in every way, and see Messy Church going from strength to strength in the years ahead.
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