Holding an exhibition in August is becoming a tradition at St Johns, the Methodist and United Reformed Church just outside the historic town walls of the beautiful seaside town of Tenby, Pembrokeshire. It held its summer fayre in August this year and alongside the usually cake stalls, tombola and silly games, they also opened a Lego Festival which ran for two weeks.
The exhibitions started with the knitted Bible in 2018, followed by a jigsaw and teddy bear exhibition in the intervening years. Each exhibition illustrated bible scenes or stories and were organised and set up by the congregation and friends.
But the Lego exhibition was quite different. The Lego exhibits came from a local collector who has been collecting Lego since the age of 6. So a special thank you to Paul and Linda Dedoncker for lending his collection and for organising the supporting boards that were lent by a local firm – Jewson. The exhibits featured: alien and monster armies (Bionicles); cities made up of a railway, ambulance station and other civil amenities; Star Wars characters; the Tardis; “posh” cars and F1 racing cars; a camel, flowers and a Christmas street scene.
It was quite a challenge to relate the exhibits to Bible, rather like trying to relate the Bible to modern life, which is a challenge for all churches today. Here is what we came up with:
The big posh cars are dotted with scripture warnings about riches (Proverbs 11:28 – “Those who trust in their riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf”). There were are quite a lot to choose from. On a different tack is: Ezekiel 1: 1, 15,16 “On July 31 of my thirtieth year I saw visions of God… 15 As I looked, I saw four wheels touching the ground … 16 The wheels sparkled as if made of beryl. All four wheels looked alike and were made the same.” This could to be cars, etc.
For the Tardis we chose Ecclesiastes 3 “For there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” …
For Yoda and Luke Skywalker we chose Isaiah 2 Kings 2: 9 “When they came to the other side, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I can do for you before I am taken away.” And Elisha replied, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit and become your successor.”
As a church in seaside town we do our best to attract visitors. If you’re into the numbers game the exhibition attracted around 500 people a day for 12 days, as well as some much-needed funds through donations.
We also had a rolling screen of Lego stop motion animation made by www.GOChatterstudies.org telling 10 bible stories. They are an excellent retelling of Bible stories – all they ask is a donation to show them, which helps to fund the telling of more stories.
One of the exhibits is of a modern city. Here we chose the scripture Acts 16:12-14 “From there we reached Philippi, a major city of that district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. And we stayed there several days” and Jeremiah 29:7 “..work for the peace and prosperity of the city … pray to the Lord for it for its welfare will determine your welfare.”
One aim as one of the town’s churches is it encourage visitors into the building, both little and grown-up kids to have fun, something to do on a rainy day, hence the exhibits and the film show. There was also an opportunity for children to play with and build their own Lego. Lego pieces from the members’ attics and cupboards were gathered and placed in a box at the back of the church. Here is a picture of one of the families.
Finally we also had a prayer tree which was well used. These prayers will be prayed by the Bible banter group thorough out the next year.
There were also lots of interesting conversations with both local visitors and visitors from further afield. It sparked off ideas for visitors from other churches. And just doing things together as a group is good for the soul.
So it was a great success on many levels.