Video: Interview with Lucy Moore

Vicar's wife and actress Lucy Moore is team leader for the highly successfull Messy Church initiative. In the first part of this three part interview Lucy shares the story of how this work first began and the various resources they offer for those wanted to set up a Messy Church.

Hello, I'm Lucy Moore. I'm a Messy Church team leader for BRF which is Bible Reading Fellowship.

Well, leading up to Messy Church I'm a vicar's wife in an Anglican church in Portsmouth. And I got involved in Messy Church-- the first Messy Church in at church there in Cowplain. And I've always been involved in youth work and children's work throughout my life. And for Messy Church is a sort of logical development out of that into family work, rather than just children's work on it's own.

And I work for Bible Reading Fellowship, and so that meant that when Messy Church started taking off, then Messy Church had a home. It had somewhere that could give it the infrastructure to do training, provide the resources to help people do Messy Church in their own churches.

Messy Church came about because, like a lot of churches, we were concerned about the lack of people coming along to Sunday services. Especially children and families. And when we asked around our parish, and looked at our own resources, we decided that what we really wanted to do is work with families. That the best way of supporting children's faith journey was to work with the whole family, not children in isolation as we've traditionally done. So we began Messy Church from asking what people wanted. And matching that up with the gifts in our own congregation which were very creative. A lot of very creative people there.

And we came up with the name when we wanted something that said it was not for perfect people. That God takes us as we are with all our messy lives. And messiness also suggests creativity and making a mess. So although it's completely un-translatable into other languages, it's been a very useful name for us. It's very catchy. It makes you ask what it is. And it gives you a lot of theology, actually. It opens up the doors to a lot of messy spirituality. Messy ways Jesus worked with people.It varies hugely how people might start a Messy Church. Quite often people will hear about it from another church because there are so many now. That they'll see it happening locally. And decide that it might be something to pursue for themselves. They could go to a training day that we put on. They could visit another Messy Church to see what it's like, and how it works, and how easy it is in lots of ways. Hard work, but a bit of a no-brainer.

And then there are lots of resources that BRF produces. There are the books, Messy Church One and Two. Sports fun for Messy Churches, Messy Christmas Craft is coming out. Lots and lots of resources. Even one that's just a very simple starting your Messy Church. A very short, straightforward book to pass around the congregation.And lots of help from other Messy Churches on the website as well. And Jane, who is my colleague, and I are only an email away. So there are lots of resources to help.