Messy Church Goes Wild on the Beach

By Steve Lock, Senior Engagement Officer.

It was so cold! And yet there was a strange warmth today as we met and did church on the beach in Penarth. It snowed, it hailed, and it was windy too, but the fun and focus filled our hearts with joy as the sun shone just at the right time.

The idea was to combine worship, normally confined to church buildings, with the wonder of creation and the wildness of winter. I think we achieved that for the families that braved the weather.

The programme was a loose mix of activities using mainly beach material like the pebbles all around us to make space for discovering faith in an otherwise faithless place.

We built pebble stacks to remind us about the importance of having the right firm foundations in our lives like the story of the wise and foolish builders in Luke 6:46-49, we took aim at some rusty tin cans, playing target practice thinking about the value of ‘fixing our eyes on Jesus’ as the writer to the Hebrew Church tells us (Hebrews 12:2) We had a massive blow up globe which we used to pray for our world, and we went on a beach clean-up looking for fossils to remind us of how old the world is and what we can do to look after it! We left encouraging messages for people to find later painted onto pebbles and we even built a boat out of those pebbles and rocks for our main bible story about how Jesus helps us through the storms of life – a very poignant message for our current world situation.

And we worship God through song and dance – we must have looked bonkers dancing there on the beach but the gladness we had fueled our hearts, and nobody seemed to mind.

Jesus helps us through the storms of life

We finished our ‘unusual’ service by toasting marshmallows around a fire to help us reflect on the sweet things of life and the goodness of the warmth we can find in every situation or storm we face – they were really yummy and went down really well with young and old alike.

Thanks to everyone involved from across the churches in Penarth and to Stol coffee for braving the weather with us. It was a wonderful experience and one we shall look to do again in other suitably unconventional worship spaces across Penarth.