It's in the Bag

Even if doing it has meant thinking outside of the box - or in the case of Beaminster - in the bag.

Fresh from their celebrations at becoming a Gold Eco Church, the Beaminster Team has launched a new Holiday Club in a bag.

For the last couple of years Beaminster Team has run a successful summer holiday outreach programme visiting villages in their team with a "holiday club in a day", but this year social distancing rules mean they have been forced to change their plans.

But it hasn't stopped them reaching out and bringing some Holiday Club fun to their parishes.

Pioneer Priest for the Team, the Revd Jo Neary explains:

"We hire a village hall, book sports through the Dorset Action Van, create a theme around a Bible story and provide a day of indoor and outdoor activities. Our monthly Messy Church is based in Beaminster but it has a break for the summer as we go out on the road to the surrounding villages. It is a great way to meet people, to explore the Bible together and to gather as families and have fun. This year, sadly, it isn't possible. So instead we are offering Summer Holiday fun activity bags.

"Each bag contains art and craft supplies and resources exploring 4 different Bible stories, plus ideas for families to explore faith together. They have been put together by our Messy Church team and are being distributed to 27 different families next week. The ideas are also available on our website with accompanying videos."

Jo said:

"We hung on and hung on, hoping we might be able to safely offer some variation of our summer outreach project but it wasn't to be. The Messy Church team managed to pull this together in a week and we had great fun packing up the bags and creating the activities. Each Bible story has a challenge to complete, to take a photo of and return to us.

"We will keep in touch with families via email and also the Messy Church team will be writing encouraging postcards to send. Many of us have had children at home full time since March. We are running out of ideas and enthusiasm, so we hope to bless families with these resources from church."

For more details go to www.beaminsterteamchurches.org.