Café Church

In December we tried something new for us

            – a Sunday church service in the style of a café.  

This has been tried by other churches to good effect but we had not done it ourselves. We have run messy events and drop in café sessions at the church, both of which include drinks and an excellent range of cakes so there was plenty of experience on those aspects.

The December Café Church did attract people who would not normally come and the feedback was very positive. Encouraged by requests to do it again, the decision has been made to run a series of these on the first Sundays of the month at 11am. These are all age events and suitable for young families, children and teenagers as well as adults. People sit round tables, just like a café, rather than in rows of chairs all pointing forwards

Last year, we ran a few themed youth sleepovers at the church that started on a Saturday and concluded after the Sunday morning service with the young people usually taking part in the latter. There have been requests to run more of these too.

We therefore intend to run a youth sleepover in preparation for, and leading into, the Café Church sessions – at least for some of them (some of us have not really come to terms with the prospect of running a youth sleepover every month!!).

 Therefore, the plan for the Café Church on Sunday 1st February is that it will be preceded by a youth sleepover starting at 2pm on Saturday 31st January.

The young people involved will put together a puppet show about one of Jesus' parables with training by Graham Miles our minister (who owns the puppets) and the result will then form a part of the Café Church session. All jolly good stuff so why not come along to this or one of the subsequent ones? – you will be very welcome.

Normality resumes on the other Sunday mornings with a crèche for younger children. The services over the next few weeks will be looking at some of the parables that Jesus taught to the crowds and then explained to His disciples.

Thank you John

John West, one of our regular leaders at the Friday Youth Club, retired as a leader at the end of the year after many years helping us out. Youth Clubs up and down the country rely very heavily on people like John to be able to run at all and we will miss him. We are very fortunate in that Aeron, one of our older young people, has developed a real interest in helping out with youth club. He is going on a training day in January and considering pursuing further education in youth work.

Messy February Half Term & Messy Easter

There are two Messy events over the next couple of months with the first being on Wednesday 18th February at and the second on Monday March 30th at EMC and both in school holidays with a starting time of 10am. As usual, these will feature an array of craft activities with some music, short message in some form and refreshments (including more cakes) at the end.

Ken Burgin    Senior Steward  

 Ken, Beck & Liz Burgin  01453 827414

    www.EastingtonMethodists.org.uk