Messy Church events are the best for inviting guests, self-directed family time, and rolling out the red carpet of hospitality to begin a new church season like Advent. With our Advent theme based on The Grinch, we opened the Sunday afternoon of the first day of Advent and will engage in the practices to grow our hearts for Jesus through Christmas Eve. Holy practices of learning, playing, praying, singing, laughing, creating, chatting, sharing, eating, and serving together as God’s people. We set up the room in zones with round tables in the center, rectangle-table stations along two walls, and the meal tables along the other two walls.

Registration included signing up to bring either a crock pot of soup, 2 large bags of rolls, set up, or clean up. The schedule looked like this:
4-4:45pm             Stations (engaging all 5 senses)
4:45-5:15pm       Service – 2 songs; interactive children’s moment #bettertogether  Grinch/isolated heart shrinks/together heart grows (learning)
5:15-5:40pm       Soup/Bread dinner (tablelife)
5:40pm-6pm      Nativity Bingo w/prizes at dinner tables (lingering at the table)
6pm                    Closing – Family Prayer

2 Meal Lines  – red table covering
Crock pots with soup & ladles, Bio-paper bowls, spoons, shredded cheese, toppings, etc., napkins
10 Meal Tables – green table covering, sit 8/table; labeled each table to dismiss for food line with each letter to spell G-R-I-N-C-H M-A-X
Conversation starters on tables
Bread rolls in center of each table on red/green paper plate

Messy Advent stations – tables along the walls; white table covering

Bag table
“Max, grab a bag. We’ll come back for the rest. Of course, when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘you.’” – The Grinch
Instructions: Grab a bag. Write your name on it. Decorate it with stickers and use it to carry all your take-home goodies.
Ask: What is your favorite thing about Christmas?
Supplies: brown gift bags, peppermint stickers, sharpies

S’mores Jars
“I’m all toasty inside.” – The Grinch
Instructions: Make s’mores with the supplies.
Ask: What is your favorite Christmas food?
Supplies: Sterno in glass jars, bamboo skewers, marshmallows, lighter, chocolate bars (2 rectangles per keeps the mess at a minimum), paper plates, graham crackers

Christmas Cards
“No one should be alone on Christmas.” – Cindy Lou Who
Instructions: Write a note of Christmas encouragement to someone special and sign your name inside the Christmas card. Place a stamp on the envelope in the upper right hand corner. Now it’s ready to mail!
Ask: Who are your favorite people to spend time with?
Supplies: Nativity Christmas cards, gel pens, winter postal stamps (This year’s Otter is super cute!)

Heart Ornament
“It’s because I’m green, isn’t it?” – The Grinch
Instructions: Write the name of Jesus on the green paper strip. Roll it up and place inside the heart. Jesus is why we celebrate Christmas. CHRIST-MUCH. CHRIST-MOST.
Ask: When we follow Jesus we give Him our heart AND our mind. What do you know about Jesus? Do you want to know more? Let me tell you….
Supplies: plastic heart ornaments, green paper, gel pens

Photo Station
“Are you having a holly, jolly Christmas?” – The Grinch
Instructions: Use the props and ask someone to take your family picture. (Getting into the habit of talking to other people.)
Supplies: Leftover Christmas wrapping paper, tape, Grinch photo props

Snowball making
“What’s that stench? It’s fantastic.” – The Grinch
Instructions: Make a snowball with the playdoh. Flatten it out and add a pinch of glitter and a drop of peppermint oil. Mix it well with your hands. Place it in the jar/bag to take home. Enjoy a peppermint candy. (Goodbye pumpkin spice, hello minter!)
Ask: What is your favorite Christmas smell?
Supplies: Candy canes, white playdoh, glitter, paper plates, peppermint essential oil, Ziploc bags

Who Hair Station
“Blast the Christmas music…It’s joyful and triumphant.” – The Grinch
Instructions: Use the supplies provided to prepare your hair properly as a Who.
Ask: What do you think would be the most fun part of being a Who?
Supplies: Red pipe cleaners, rubber bands, brush, hand mirrors, chair (Two youth ladies took this station to a whole new level as they worked together and chatted with the youngers!)

Face/Hand Painting
Supplies: 2 chairs, face paint, paper plates, paint brush, demo sheet of possibilities (bow, heart, manger, candy, candy cane, etc.)

Nativity Bingo
Use Christmas cereal, mini marshmallows, or M&Ms for playing pieces; Nativity Bingo sheets
Prizes – consumables(for dessert) such as Little Debbie Christmas Trees, Girl Scout Cookies, Confetti Cannons, etc.

A Faith Milestone: I Can Worship With My Family was a teaching service in the Sanctuary at 11am, the prime time of our church family gathering. The service was the culmination of two months’ of teaching with teaching continuing within the service.

The local church may teach holy habits in classroom settings and at special events, but I’ve never known a church to teach about worship. We talk about it. We plan for it. We set aside the greatest amount of our budget for it. We guard the space and time for it. We built for it. Yet we expect everyone to just ‘pick it up as you go.’ It’s been my experience that worship is caught and rarely taught. This makes for awkward moments, uncertain expectations, clumsy transitions, and unsettled assumptions for our guests no matter how well we roll out the hospitality before and after. The generation of parents today will do anything to avoid feeling uncertain, clumsy, and anxious about anything. We help by offering spaces and places where we learn together.

In the actual service, we taught four specific elements within the service.
1. Who were the people on the stage/chancel and why were they there? Example: a choir is a group of people who lead us in singing praises to our Great God. The individual pastors gave their names, explained what they each do, and made an announcement.
2. What are the hymnals and how to read a page? Example: the title is not always the actual title to a song; the words along the bottom are special; we sang a William Bradbury song and our special worship leader gave a brief, kid-friendly history lesson since he also wrote “Jesus Loves Me.” Mr. Bradbury wrote choral music and loved writing music children could sing well in church.
3. As United Methodists we give and return to the Lord from our vows of membership: we give our prayers (we pray for each other), our presence (we come to church; gather together in community), our gifts (we give a regular amount of all money we receive through earning or gifting), our service (we use our skills and learn new skills to help our church family and our neighbors), and our witness (we invite people to come to church to worship and learn about Jesus).
4. Ways to respond/participate in what we hear, sing, do in worship? We sing, we listen for special words (every time we heard the word ‘strong’ or ‘strength’ we flexed our muscles) and we return to the Lord our portion. The congregation walked up to drop/pour their offerings in buckets (noisy buckets of galvanized metal on wooden steps). 

The teaching which took place over the two months’ prior included:
1. The purpose of an order of worship by forming and directing a worship planning team.
2. Taught the Apostle’s Creed line by line as well as the American sign language in Sunday morning large group as a statement of what Christians believe.
3. Worship art to provide the visual elements to worship. Two 5th grade girls signed up for flowers and they filled the stage area with flowers, vegetables, and plants of the fall season. The 1st & 2nd graders painted banners and black foam boards in their Sunday morning small group time (what colors…white on black foam board… can be seen in a large group in a large space to make it feel more intimate?)
4. It was the 3rd Sunday of our Stewardship campaign so the children were given and taught the Godly way of handling money 4 weeks prior, then given plastic jars to take home to work to earn money to ‘save’, ‘spend’, and ‘return’ back to the Lord at this service since everything belongs to Him anyway.
5. We published and promoted the ABCs of Family Worship in print, social media, and on the bulletin back so the expectations were as clear as we could make them.

The special movement elements included:
1. The scriptures read were printed on slips of paper and ‘found’ under the pew cushions.
2. The Call to Worship was a familiar song with motions: My God Is So Great
3. The processional included acolytes (candle lighters; cross bearer), littles holding up signs with special words-of-the-day to listen for in the service (painted on black foam board); percussion instruments played by children
4. Children served read scripture from the floor; read prayers; directed people where to sit; handed out bulletins they’d folded at dress rehearsal the Wednesday prior; handed out worship bags.
5. Bags were given to all with pipe cleaners which were used to shape into hearts and held by families to pray together in place of a pastoral prayer. The children filled all the bags at the dress rehearsal the Wednesday night before.
6. Leaf cutouts were placed in all the hymnals on the page we would be singing from.
7. Our special worship leader taught movements to the first congregational song, Raise A Hallelujah, A bridge in a song, the hymnal pieces, etc.
8. Everyone was instructed to text a family selfie to a number at the beginning of the service. The pics were compiled and our amazing tech ninja team put them into a slide show at the close of the service as the congregation sang, “I’m So Glad I’m a Part of the Family of God.”

As a teaching service, it looked nothing like a children’s program. That was the point.  Our senior pastor still preached his stewardship sermon. It was a service where the entire church family could participate, not just spectate. We sang, we gave, we served, we shared, we moved, we learned, and we want to do it again. There are so many other elements to teach and learn and one service is not enough time. We’ve already asked for the last Sunday in March.

What is it? A worship service….
– where little people actively participate in various interactive elements…and so do their families.
– where children learn and practice some of our church’s cherished traditions.
– where there is movement and all five senses are engaged.
– where we utilize art, drama, songs, percussion, storytelling, current events, poetry and holy habits to reinforce a central theme as we help children connect with God.
– when we create a developmentally appropriate faith formation teaching experience that worship is so positive that worship will always be a major part of their lives.

In complete transparency, this was amazing AND it had its challenges. There were lots of moving pieces over an extended period of time. There were lots of unmet expectations because those expectations did not serve the ‘what is it’ above. The amazing parts were the people, the parents, the grandparents, the children, the leaders, the pastors, and the feedback of, “We need to do this every quarter or more.” Families want to learn to follow Jesus and grow in their faith together. Worship teaching services are worth all the challenges, because everything we do that tells Jesus, “I love you!” is worship. Even walking through challenges. He is worth it!

“He said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Genesis 22:5

We’re leveraging the time change and encouraging families to come to church early. I was a band mom and we learned, ‘If you’re on time, you’re late.”  Several of our families were arriving late and we wanted to make it worth their while to arrive early so the children had time to play with their church friends before our regular programming.

There are lots of reasons why folks can’t get to church on time, or early. It’s Saturday down South, so there are late college football games. Some folks are just tired. I get it. We also have an enemy who wishes to keep us from growing in our faith in Jesus and spiritual warfare is real. When mine were little I intentionally made Sunday morning different and special. We started these Sunday habits even before I was on church staff. I’d get up way before everyone else, make ‘add water’ muffins, and serve everyone breakfast in bed with a muffin and a favorite morning tasty beverage. The smell of fresh-baked muffins and a smoother start to the day made all the difference in the world for our family. Church on Sunday started on Saturday by gathering clothes, shoes, Bibles, tithe envelopes, quarters for the littles, gas in the car, etc. all before dinner on Saturday. A much easier way to start a sacred day set apart for sacred things. 

As families are trying their best to make Sunday mornings happen, we pulled from our season of Special Summer Sundays to roll out the red carpet of hospitality for the thirty minutes before Sunday school in the Children’s Welcome Center.

Legos & Eggos – Invited a fabulous mom to wear a chef’s costume and serve up various flavors of Eggos with syrup and whipped cream (the best topping ever!) hot from the toaster as we had buckets and bowls of Lego bricks all over all the tables. I borrowed toasters from my Bible study group.

B.A.R.F. – Living into our vow of membership to support the church with our witness, kids Bring A Real Friend to Sunday school. Placed fake barf on all the tables. Made a bowl of BARF in a cereal dump of Fruity Pebbles and a bunch of little boxes of various cereals, then added milk. We served with spoons in small cups. Kids invited friends and parents picked up kids all along the way to church to come early and enjoy some BARF. They LOVED it and we met some new friends!

PopTarts & Pickles – Of course they don’t go together, but the phrase easily rolls off the tongue. The previous week we started talking it up for kids to be adventurous to eat pickles on their PopTarts. A sticky and hilarious memory for sure.

Pumpkin Day – We’re playing Bible Bingo with all the prizes pumpkin related. I like watching the kids carrying their big winnings around campus and chatting with the many who ask about it. Now to find the largest boxes of pumpkin cereal, pumpkin pies, and all the pumpkin stuff I can find. Y’all….I found Pumpkin Spice Ramen Noodles. Yep, that’s making the prize table!

Our church has taken the last year to determine not only our core beliefs, but our core values. As a staff and a church in our local community, it was decided that our number one core value is hospitality.

Hospitality is any opportunity to show over-the-top love and care. In true edit-to-excellence mode, the kidmin team has been evaluating our family’s experiences with an informal hospitality audit from the pre-visit through dismissal.

Intentional Pre-visit experience should include

• Overcommunicating where to park, enter, and what to bring (most non-typical item first), then we know where to jack up the greet/sign-in/place additional information, and signage at registration.
• Consistent start times. Families don’t have time to wait, so CLUB345 begins at 3:45, Bible study always starts at 6:30pm on a Tuesday (but we are ready at 6pm to build in margin for chatting and relationship-building).
• Consistent end times. No one likes finishing late. Everyone expects to finish on time. Everyone likes finishing early. Family schedules are too tight to add to their stress. This attention to time builds trust.
• Communicate Sunday info on Tuesday AND Thursday to give time for weekend planning and the checking of emails.
• Update social media the morning of a special so that families can easily find the info at the top of the social media feed.
• Online registration confirmation reads, “All communication for this event will be by the email address used for this registration.” By communicating several times to that email address beforehand, we build energy.
• Space looks updated, clean, sharp, and intentional. Be a good sharer of spaces because most people don’t know how to do it well. Tip: Walk the entrance, hallway, and rooms. Wash the windows, doors, light switches, throw away the clutter or buy storage bins which look like we are ready for company all the time. Add mulch/pine straw and flowers at the entrance all your families use to attend your programs on a regular, scheduled basis. 
• It matters how people feel BEFORE the experience and AT THE END of the experience, so be sure to ask, “How will this space/event/experience make someone feel walking in?, Waiting for pickup?, At closing, Whey someone is walking out the door?”

Present Assessment

With the eyes of a parent/grandparent, we ask…“Have we made it easy for families to know the what, when, where, who of Sunday morning and any special event?”
– Communicate where to park, then we know where to focus the greatest attention to visual elements..
– Consistent update the website. Develop a system and shared process for everyone, then do updates early and with great joy.
– Check the website weekly for what applies to the children and check ALL the registration links.

Action Steps

Thirty to 45-minutes prior to all activities/events I walk through ALL of our spaces picking up remnants of ‘whatever’ from the floors, turn on all the lights, check the temperature, empty the dehumidifiers (our space is underground and surrounded by trees), open all the doors, check the bathrooms that all are working for supplies, and basically inspect to set aright all the spaces shared by littles and the bigs who serve them.

• Is our dismissal (ending experience) as great as our arrival experience?

Story: What we saw in our auditing our Sunday morning dismissal experience is that we had a couple of runners (students who didn’t want to wait until their parents picked them up) and students who crowded the exit door waiting for their parents, requiring our team to likely ask students to step back, and not crowd. We felt like we were fussing at the kids. Not a great dismissal experience. Talking through multiple scenarios, we now return all the students to the Welcome Center where they play games with friends until called by walkie-talkie to exit through another doorway. No more crowding nor running, and kids are laughing and playing. What we say to them as they leave is a blessing. Their last experience is with a smile and a ‘kind send off’ into the world . Their ending experience is as good as their all-morning experience.

Evaluation

• Goal: I’m shooting for visit #3. “Do what you do so well that kids will want to see it again and bring their friends.” – Walt Disney
• Goal: I’m shooting for another connection. With multiple onramps, we can target what would be a natural next step in discipleship for a family.
• Goal: What will be so greatly consistent, one of our own will want to invite someone else from their team, class, neighborhood, school, server at the local restaurant they frequent, to come to their church? Be ready to ask a kid, “Who can you bring next time?” 
• Ask: How can what we do in kidmin hospitality be a blessing to others in the church outside kidmin? We are not responsible for every area, but we are responsible for all the areas and experiences of our own.

Story: Last Sunday was the first chilly morning of the season. I picked up 3 gallons of apple cider to set up a hot apple cider station in the Children’s Welcome Center. The Children’s Welcome Center opens 30 minutes before all other programming on campus. The kids who came early enjoyed hot apple cider to taste and smell. A really great smell! Once Sunday school started, we moved the hot apple cider station to the gathering outside the Children’s Welcome Center with a balloon which read, “Happy Fall” to share with those who linger between services in that space and a senior saints Sunday school which meets in their large group after. 

Story: I wash the glass doors where my families enter and church greeters stand because a beautiful day has got to be seen clearly.

Story: Since most of our kidmin families enter through those glass doors from the parking lot, I pay a lot of attention to that entrance so it looks attractive and welcoming, uncluttered and ‘prepared for company’. I’ve invited several folks who love to play in the dirt to update the island flower beds for fall/winter including pine straw. 

What does an edit to excellence of hospitality look like in your ministry with children and families? I’m always wondering, “What am I missing?”

It’s been a bit and I’ve missed the faces of my ministry friends from around the country, so I set up two zoom calls. One for Advent ideation and another for Innovation into 2022. So many great ideas were shared, but here are a few of my own takeaways:

Advent Ideation

• Don’t just prepare for Christmas, but be intentional about those two weekends following with a Blessing of the Toys, a cereal bar, a Pancakes & Pajamas, or other such special experience.
• Use November and not wait for December for Advent.
• Prioritize the one thing which will have the biggest bang for your buck and throw your greatest creative energies and budget at that.
• Address Christmas cards with a nativity image now (November) to your families. Ask a church saint with beautiful handwriting to hand write the addresses on envelopes, get the cards signed by the clergy/church leaders, yourself, or kidmin team. Stamp now to be ready to mail the first week of December. Personal touches at Christmas are powerful.
• Offer at-home popup advent calendars for church families and a small take-home for preschool/recreation ministry families to hint what can be shared if they come to church. We want folks to come to children’s ministry programming, so don’t give away the whole thing of what you share at church. Giving them a cut out star or birthday candle is easier on the budget and can be prepped now (November).
• Nativity is the priority. Keep all things pointed to Jesus. It’s CHRIST-mas….much about Christ.
• Go ahead and give your servant/leaders/volunteers a schedule of what’s coming up for Advent. They want to be there and though they might not sign up early, they need to know early to move some pieces of life around to make things work.
• Advent is for you and your family, too. Build in margin for your own family to celebrate Advent. Pre-set priorities now for you and your family’s calendar and budget. 

Innovation into 2022 – The ZOOM Call Rules: No mention of VBS or Sunday school referring instead to ‘Sunday morning’ or season of faith formation experience.

Facts to consider:

• Families are looking for experiences over stuff.
• Faith formation on other days of the week offer greater relevance to those with work rhythms where Sunday is a work-day.
• Parents are asking for help with life skills.

Ideas:

• Kids have grown and look different than last we saw them. One church made a grade-level church directory to use to pray over the children followed by notes home which read, “Your name was on my lips when I talked to God this morning.” Start with your oldest in your ministry since your remaining time with them is shorter.
• Hospitality on the front end is what we’re good at. Evaluate the last experience and intentional hospitality on the back end with an edited dismissal, a Chapstick or oil-roller blessing on the back of the hand, a free-time-to-chat-to-build-relationship experience, greeters with smiling resting faces at the end of a service and not just the beginning.
• Parents and grandparents receive online newsletters and calendars, but kids love mail and get very little. Mail a monthly paper newsletter specific to youngers and another specific to olders with dates for upcoming events, but also riddles and easy faith formation experiences to do at home. This is the stuff which makes the refrigerator or family bulletin board. Rather than monthly, I’ll be looking at doing this quarterly.
• Go in for the big asks: money, space, calendar, resources, budget. You might get a ‘no’, but it’s only the first ‘no’. Keep sharing the vision for reaching families where they are. Build in room for negotiation by going in large.

• When a person leads a small group or Bible study, they also agree to recruit from their circle of relationships OUTSIDE the church to participate. Promoting in the bulletin won’t reach new people like the circle of friends a leader already has outside the church. Co-lead with that person to take care of promoting inside the church as well as offer any administrative and follow-up support. Model what you want from your leaders.
• Tap into the faith formation skills and experiences of Christian grandparents in the church. These are the untapped volunteers to hand-address Christmas cards, birthday postcards, pour hot apple cider, serve at the Eggo waffle station on time-change Sunday, be present for hospitality at the beginning and the end of, and transport their grand to/from children’s activities/events at church.  

How does Advent look differently for you? What are you hoping for in 2022? The seasons are on top of each other. Carve out a bit of ‘balcony time’ for each (looking from above at the greater picture) then put on something sparkly, pick up a medicine-ball tea from Starbucks, and let’s get this advent and new year party started. How can I help?

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13