Messy Church NZ Newsletter, October 2022
Kia Ora to you all,
This morning I have been speaking with a health professional about anxiety and mental health and practices around maintaining a healthy state of mind, when so many of the things we once depended on are now unpredictable or constantly changing. One of the strategies that came into conversation was, what is known as “The 5 Senses Exercise”. Using our five senses to ground ourselves to our immediate environment and what is around us (sight, hearing, feeling, smell, taste), to return our minds to a state of calm. Psalm 23:2 ‘He lets me rest in green meadows and leads me beside peaceful streams’, also invites us to a place of refocus and refreshment.
As we as a nation are seeing our way out the other side of a pandemic that has impacted each of us in different ways and continues to in the background, it is sometimes hard to see forward. Our future as Messy Church is evolving perhaps differently to what we might have imagined and yet through the creativity of you all, we indeed have a way forward.
In today’s newsletter we have included articles and posters (attached):
A word from Richard our Messy Church New Zealand Team Leader.
A document for discussion around our National identity and an Incorporated Society and how best to journey forward from Alex.
We are offering a National Retreat February 3rd/4th 2023
Other dates to keep in mind and join us on Zoom as advertised on our Facebook pages:
18th October 1-2pm for our first Master Class, Messy Church Goes Wild
2nd November 1-2pm Q and A Zoom re Incorporated Society
For links to these please email jocelyn@messychurch.nz
Messy Church Library
Fern has been enjoying catching up on the latest additions to our library, Messy Church Goes Wild and Messy Vintage are both now available. For more info contact me on carrole@messychurch.nz
Grace and Peace
Carrole (and Fern)
Letter to New Zealand Messy Churches
Dear Messy Church Leaders,
I would like to thank you all for your commitment to the Messy Church style of being church to the people in your community during the time I have been involved with the National Team. The last two years have been trying times with covid being a challenging factor, however God has been faithful in supporting your endeavours in the Messy Church space.
It is with some sadness that I am advising that I am stepping down from leading the National Team in early February 2023, as I have accepted a leading role in my local community in a ‘community-led’ development team. I do so in the knowledge that the New Zealand Messy Churches are in good hands and that the National Team is beginning to develop exciting initiatives to strengthen and grow the Messy Church family in this country.
Some of the things to look forward to are Messy Church Master Classes, which are hour long internet training and support sessions, and a National Retreat in Wellington on the 3rd and 4th February 2023. There will be more information to come on these in the following weeks.
For now, God bless you in all your endeavours for His kingdom,
Richard Stevens.
September 2022.
In The Beginning!
To all those excited about MESSY CHURCH IN NEW ZEALAND: How can we create a sure foundation for the future? When did we begin? Messy Church emerged as a fresh expression of church life in the United Kingdom in 2004 out of the creative imagination of Lucy Moore. Lucy developed her God-given creative idea under the auspices of the Bible Reading Fellowship (UK) < www.brf.org.uk >. Lucy has a background as a secondary school teacher and as an Anglican Lay Canon of Portsmouth Cathedral. Recently (Feb 2022) she was appointed as the first Head of the Church of England’s new Growing Faith Foundation.
The Rev Debbie Smith was the first National Co-ordinator appointed in New Zealand in 2009 with resourcing provided by a generous anonymous UK donor through the BRF. Lucy Moore came to New Zealand in 2014 to speak at conferences around the country giving encouragement as the movement grew in New Zealand. This growth within New Zealand has been supported with UK resourcing. However, it was given with an expectation that Messy Church NZ would develop its own resourcing and leadership. Currently, our National Team operates as an informal group reliant on UK funding which ceased in 2020. It is important for the ongoing life of Messy Church NZ that we develop our own constitution and ways and means of doing things here.
Finding a way forward.
Several Messy Church leaders from NZ attended the International Messy Church Conference in North Devon UK in 2019. There a conversation began about the way forward for Messy Church NZ. With the encouragement of the head of BRF UK, Richard Fisher, Lucy Moore and others, the National Team began working towards forming a constitution for New Zealand. The advantages for having our own legally constituted oversight body were seen as to:
Give clarity to our vision and purpose.
Give guidance and direction to local Messy Church leaders and groups.
Provide resources, training opportunities, and conferences to promote Messy Church.
Provide for leadership succession over time.
Be a source of information and guidelines to general enquirers and denominational leaders on Messy Church.
To implement a plan for the ongoing support of existing groups and support the development of new groups.
To acquire the protections and benefits of Charitable Status, including tax deductibility for donations.
To enable us to apply to appropriate bodies for project grants.
To be properly and appropriately accountable for our activities.
To be a liaison group for Messy Church internationally and an agent through a formal Agreement, for BRF and Messy Church UK.
The outcome of nearly two years of Covid-interrupted conversation, meetings and negotiation has been the development of two documents. Firstly a proposed Constitution for an Incorporated Society, and a formal Agreement between the NZ oversight body and BRF UK. We invite all supporters of Messy Church NZ to view the two documents on our website www.messychurch.nz and to click on the link to complete a short survey giving your views on what is proposed. If you are interested in supporting this initiative by becoming a member of the society, please add your name and contact details. We need a minimum of fifteen people to apply for registration.
With prayerful best wishes from
The NZ Messy Church National Team
September 2022
