Sunday 2 March 2014

Coffee Church

We don't go to church every week and it took us ages to find a church service to suits us. Lots were, wearing Sunday best, children should be seen and not heard, unfriendly, luckily our own local church started Coffee Church. It's very informal, you sit around at tables with tea/coffee, you don't have to stand to sing. It's very interactive, there's usually a quiz which is usually full of laughter as we get the answers wrong! But the best bit is that children can sit on a long line of tables crayoning, doing puzzles and using play-doh.
They can move around the church, they can come and see their family and show what they've made. After years of stressing over children making too much noise, being bored and hearing tuts resonating around the church I can now enjoy a friendly welcoming service.
We are the only family with children that consistently go and so we now are extremely interactive with the service.
All five children do the bible reading in the guise of a dramatic reading, luckily no acting is involved!
Eden has played her guitar and sung for over a year now but Clark has now been asked to play a beat box .
You sit on it to play it, this isn't Clark's legs by the way!

So he's been practicing all week and played today.
I took some pictures of Eden, Chris, our church youth worker and Clark. I think there's one of Soloman giving Chris a hug too. The children love him to bits!



I didn't get much knitting done last night, I've added a few more blogs to my reading list and I went through the lot reading back on a few of them until Casualty came on! Hopefully I'll catch up a bit tonight!
It's been raining all afternoon which is really boring. It's quite cold too, still no snow though? Anyone else got any?

15 comments:

  1. Sticking the blog roll of the ones you follow in your sidebar is a good idea too. People appreciate reciprocation and will put you on theirs. You're on mine but whether that's done you any good I don't know! Like the sound of your church. Not a believer myself but have enormous respect for those who are and this church's way of approaching faith seems entirely appropriate. xx

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    1. I've thought of putting a blogroll in my sidebar but I'm not sure how to do it hence the lack of anything in my sidebar! I'!m not a steadfast Christian, I'm far to naughty! But I like to live by treating others as I would like to be treated, although some people do make that hard for me at times!

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  2. I like a good trip round blog lists popping in and out. I am starting to look at crochet orientated ones now, Attica 24 is awe inspiring.

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    1. How funny Pam, that blog is exactly the one I was reading last night. I went quite a way back and was inspired. I'm finding that I'm attracted more and more to knitting and crochet blogs. I still love self sufficient ones and home educations ones too though! Basically I'll read anything then!! People have such interesting lives and it's lovely to have a little peek into them. X

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  3. Sounds just perfect for you and your family

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    1. If the children are happy then I'm happy!

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  4. How good to find a welcoming church, some of the services i've been to in various places over the years have been dire.
    Once, 8 months pregnant, still being a cub leader, i went into the church before the cubs so I could sit down. The cubs were parading the flag in and we were supposed to be sitting at the front. So I sat down and was promptly told " You cant sit there, that's the ******families pew! "
    What a warm welcome!

    I'm having problems keeping up with reading all the blogs in my blog roll as I've added several lately, though I've just taken 1 off as it had so much advertising on, can't be doing with all that.

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    1. There have been a few where it's taken all my willpower not to get all the children up and walk out to be honest! It's such a shame, no wonder church congregations are going down in numbers!

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  6. That sounds like a great church. It's a shame that many more churches aren't so welcoming to both children and adults alike. We had to cancel Eleanor's christening when she was a baby as my sister died a few day before. It was a year or two later that we decided to go ahead with the christening and you should have heard the hoops we were asked to jump through before we could reschedule it. We didn't bother. The church got a new vicar a few years ago and he's lovely, so different from the one before and he was only too happy to christen Eleanor for us, not only that but he made us, and our guests at the christening so welcome, and it was held just before Christmas in the normal Sunday service. It really was a wonderful day and everyone commented on how fabulous the service was. They wonder why the number of people who go to church is dwindling, they should look at how welcome people feel when they attend and they'll get their answers. Churches which are more welcoming usually have the largest congregations.

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    1. I'm so with you on that Jo x Even churches are full of politics nowadays, it's hard to change anything. So many good ideas are just dismissed because of all the meetings these ideas have to get through! All ours were christened at the same church which was lovely, incidentally myself and my three siblings were christened there too.

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  7. that sounds like such a cool church :)

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    1. It's a good service. It took us ages to find the right church for us though!

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  8. It took us ages to find our church but ours holds a similar "cafe service" once a month with tables and chairs, colouring sheets and activities. And plenty of coffee :) Our church is very good about kids and noise, good job really given that we take L to it.

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  9. Haha! Bless him! Even though the children are otherwise engaged in activities it's amazing how much of the service they pick up!

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