Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Thriving.
Thriving is created by the discipleship and advocacy team of the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania Uniting Church in Australia.
This podcast is produced on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri people.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Thriving podcast. It's great to have you with us again today. We're joined by Marcus Gibbs from the UK and Amanda Linker from Indigen Australia. And we're here to talk about Bubble Church. So welcome to Australia, Marcus, and it's great to have you both with us today. We've been doing bubble church training for the seven new bubble churches that are about to start in Australia.
So firstly, we'd like to know a bit about both of you and then it would be wonderful to hear what exactly is this bubble church all about? Who you'd like to start telling us about yourselves.
[00:00:50] Speaker C: So, I am currently a minister in an Anglican church in Melbourne. I've been involved in children's and families ministry for 25 years. Before that, I was involved in education and training.
And a really funny side note, or very important side note, is I used to work for a fashion label that designed outfits for Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[00:01:21] Speaker C: So, yes. So I have a real passion for children's and families to know Jesus.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Marcus, can you beat Stevie Nicks?
[00:01:28] Speaker D: I can't beat that at all. I'm Marcus. I'm a vicar, a church leader in London in England, and I am also now the head of Bubble Church in the uk. But no, I can't compete with the fashion Stevie Nicks thing.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And do you have a family? Do you tell us about the church.
[00:01:46] Speaker D: So, I mean, we'll come on to Bubble Church in a moment, but I think one of the things that helped us start bubble church was the fact that I did have a young family and we just had a newborn and we had another child who was three years old and actually got us thinking we'd love to do church that's going to work for them. So that was kind of part of the inspiration, I suppose, behind it. So, yeah, I'm married to Cara. She is a prison chaplain and we've got two children. And, yeah, like I said, Fika in southwest London.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Fantastic. So, Marcus, what on earth is bubble church? It's a question I get asked a lot. Can you fill us in on the story?
[00:02:26] Speaker D: Absolutely. So bubble church started about six years ago. We were wondering, how on earth can we grow as a church? We were really struggling to grow and we also realized that there were a lot of young families with Young children in our community. And it was actually my wife who came up with the idea. She said, why don't we do something called bubble church? I said, what on earth is bubble church? And she said, well, let's do a half hour service with puppets and with Bible story, action songs, that kind of thing. And I said, that sounds like a brilliant idea. So we launched bubble church and we went from zero people coming to six months later, over a hundred people coming. It was one of those incredible moments where you just see growth and it was a fantastic thing. Yeah. Like I say, it's a service for parents of little ones and little ones. It lasts half an hour. We do it every Sunday at 9:30 in the morning.
I think what's just been great for us is it's brought people into church who would never normally have gone to church.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: So I'm seeing lots of puppets on the banner there. What's it got to do with bubbles? What are the bubbles?
[00:03:39] Speaker D: So the bubbles are little circular carpets that everyone sits on. One of the things about bubble church that is great is everyone sits on a bubble which is one of these circular carpets on the floor. So whether you're little, whether you're a grown up, you. Everyone is on the same level. It's like we're all growing in faith together.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: I like that idea. And the puppets are there.
[00:04:01] Speaker D: There are puppets, they appear, they then disappear for a while and then we all shout out, 1, 2, 3, puppets, and back they come and they join in with the songs, the actions, and they also help tell the Bible story. They act out and tell the Bible story. So the puppets have a very significant role.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: So how do you then understand the Bible story? You don't have a sermon, do you?
[00:04:24] Speaker D: No. So what there is, is there's various sections to the service, but we get to the Bible story and our service leader tells the story. And as the service leader is telling the story, the puppets are kind of acting that out. We're not trying to win awards for puppetry. What we're doing is just really trying to engage the little children and the grownups with that Bible story.
And then having told the Bible story, hopefully in a really accessible way with the puppets, we then always have a creative response afterwards, which is a way of engaging with the story.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: That's pretty simple.
[00:05:01] Speaker D: Yeah, it's always really simple. I mean, one example, we told the story of someone experiencing God through the wind, through the rushing over the wind. And the response was there was a straw in everyone's bag that was on their bubble and they took out the straw and just, just blew through the straw onto one another's hands. And it's just that. Right, okay. That helps me engage with the Bible story.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: And that's really accessible for small children, isn't it?
[00:05:28] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: So you're basically really talking about a church service here. This is basically church. Right?
[00:05:33] Speaker D: That is exactly the thing we are doing church. It's called Bubble Church. The giveaways in the name. And we're really clear that this isn't a route to church. It's not a kids club, it's not playgroup, it's not a drop, it's not even an event. It is church and it has all the different elements of church in it. So when people come to Bubble Church, it's not like we're now trying to get them along to proper church. Is church fantastic? Yeah, they're coming to church.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: So, Amanda, congratulations on your new role as the Intergen Executive Officer. That's your title, I believe.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: I think it's Executive Director.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Executive Director.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: And so. Well, you might want to tell us who on earth indigen are in case people are unsure, but how did Intergen get involved in bubblechurch? What's this about?
[00:06:21] Speaker C: Yeah, so Intergen has been around for quite a long time. It's had a few different name changes over many years. But one of the things that I think is core to Intergen is it provides resourcing to intergenerational communities and really key is children's and families ministry. So I've been on the board of Intergen for 10 years and over the 10 years we've done a number of things. But one of the things that we have done for a very long time is provide resources for loads of churches, not only in Australia and New Zealand, but around the world. So these are lectionary resources that any church can use. You can download them and use them in your church services.
No, they're free. We. You have an opportunity, if you want to, to donate some money. But they are free resources and I've used them in my kids ministry and they're fantastic.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: I can give them a plug too because apart from having written quite a lot of them, I edit them. So I can tell you they're pretty good. Yeah, so that's. And the other thing Intergen's done is some work with neurodiversity. So we've run a big conference in the last 12 months, Amanda, and we've got a little webinar coming up as well in October.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Yeah, we do. And last Year we had, as Sandy said, we had a large conference on neurodiversity where we really wanted to support ministry practitioners in their roles in churches. And we had people coming from overseas to speak and people from interstate and then local people who had experience in this area. And I think, I mean, I personally found it really helpful. And this is a key thing that Intergen want to continue to do to support ministry practitioners in this space.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: So watch out for the advertising for the webinar that's coming up in October, and for our second national neurodiversity conference, belonging by design in 2027.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Fantastic. But in the meantime, we're launching a relationship with bubblechurch UK and tell us what happened, Tell us about the training we've done today, what's been going on.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: Yeah, so the story really started a year ago where we started a conversation with bubblechurch uk.
The board had some zooms and then I think we, we chatted about it and thought, look, if we really want to take this seriously, we need to actually see a bubble church. So not just on YouTube but actually go to the UK and experience it. So we went to Marcus's church in April. There were four board members that went to Ascension Bellum and I remember the night before we were all saying to each other, look, if this is not right, we've actually got to be really honest and say this is not going to land in Australia.
But I think when we went to the service we were all really surprised and me personally, I was so excited about Bubble Church being an actual church service. And I think the three things that really stood out to me was the generosity of the hospitality, the welcome and the fact that the service is laid out like a church service and seems so easy to put on. It's not going to take you hours to do it. So over the last couple of days we've had. Yesterday we had a bubble church taster where we invited anyone to come and actually see a 30 minute bubble church. And people really enjoyed being part of that yesterday and learning more about Bubble church. And then today we've actually run bubble church training. So the Bubble Church UK team ran the training for seven pilot churches. We had a church from Queensland, one from New South Wales, one from South Australia and four from Melbourne and Victoria.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: So we'd hoped when we went over for that visit in April, we thought, well, we might be lucky. We want four. We won four pilot churches, we really hope we can actually pull off four. And we were a bit dubious, but we had seven today and we had I don't know how many we had yesterday, but we had eight or nine, ten churches here yesterday, interested in finding out. So it's kind of exciting how many churches are keen to get on board and give it a go. So if I was going to turn up at your church, Marcus, with my small children, what would I expect to happen when I arrived?
[00:10:57] Speaker D: Well, I think what we found really interesting is 70 to 80% of people who come to Bubble Church haven't been to church before. And therefore it's really important that what they get when they walk in, the first thing they get is just a real sense of welcome and hospitality. And that's what we try to provide when people walk in. I mean, most parents need caffeine and when they walk in, we offer them a really great cup of coffee, something to eat. In the uk, we do a croissant, We've had some donuts here and other things. And just that sense of, yes, you're welcome. There's some nice ambient background music on. And it's just that sense of, I'm here and there's other people like me with small children here. No one's being shhed or anything like that. And so I think the first thing people seem to experience, which is so great about Bubble Church, is that warm welcome and that sense of, it's great you're here, which isn't always the case with churches. So that's kind of the first thing they experience.
And then I think after that, there's that sense of them doing it together as a family.
So what we don't do is separate off the children from the grownups. It's like, no, you stay with your family, you stay with the grownups you've come with, you stay together and you're experiencing and participating in this service all together. It starts with some really simple opening words with actions that everyone joins in with. And then we head into an action song. And then we have this one moment. One of my favorite moments in the service is the godspot, where people can come up, little ones can come up and say something that they're wanting to say thank you to God for. And we've had the most wonderful and hilarious things. So often we have little ones coming up thanking God for unicorns or for dinosaurs. And then you get some really brainy kids who come up. We have one come up and say, thank you, Lord, for photosynthesis.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:12:58] Speaker D: And we all said amen. And a lot of them, it's really moving. A lot of them just come up and say thank you for Mummy or thank you for Daddy or thank you for grandparents. And, you know, so the God spot's a really special moment.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: So.
[00:13:11] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: So this is probably the first time ever that kids are learning to pray. They're learning what it means to actually speak to God.
[00:13:18] Speaker D: Yeah, that's absolutely spot on. And I think, again, it's that thing where they're participating. It's not like it's all just being done to them. They are participating in church, like you say. And there's no wrong answers, right? No wrong answers. And they're, like you say, praying for the first time and. Yeah, we don't correct them. Unicorns or anything like that. We. Yeah, let's thank God for those things, you know. So. Yeah, it's very moving, actually.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: And I mean, are people becoming Christians? Do you get a baptism or two?
[00:13:53] Speaker D: Yeah, we in the uk. So it spread beyond the church we're in. We're now. Bubble church is running in around 100 churches in the UK, which is amazing. And I think, just to say on that, a real breadth of churches. So it's not just one flavor of church. We've seen it across a real breadth of traditions. But we've had, I think, around 165 baptisms in bubble church, which is incredible. Wow. Forces that. It really is church. It's because people are actually coming to faith and getting baptized in bubble church. Yeah, it's been so encouraging.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: So what did the.
The churches that were here today, Amanda? The seven. The seven churches. That's a bit of a scary number. The seven churches. How did they feel at the end of the day? Were they kind of daunted by what, all the terrible things they had to do to make this happen, or were they feeling positive when they left?
[00:14:46] Speaker C: Look, I think they were feeling very excited and there was one church that just would love to start it tomorrow if they could.
So I think most of them at the end said that they don't feel daunted at all because it's a very simple service to put on because everything's provided for you. It doesn't mean that you could ring into Gen up tomorrow and start it on Sunday because training has to be done, there's an application process, there's an interview, so there's a few hoops to go through. But I think that most of the churches today were just encouraged and impressed that this is a simple thing for their churches to be able to do. It's a simple church service to put on.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: Do they have to go and invent their own banners and invent their own marketing strategies and all that stuff as well?
[00:15:41] Speaker C: No. So when you're accepted as a bubble church in Australia and New Zealand, you buy a kit which will, you know the value of the kit, let's say it'll be around 1000 Australian dollars and it includes banners and postcards and a pull up banner, things like the bubble mats that you need, the T shirts, the puppets, the stage. So it comes with everything. Then once you get approved as a bubble church, you do training. There's access to training videos on the bubble church website and you're really well supported. You're not only supported by the Bubble Church UK team, but also by Intergen.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: And does it cost something to run if you start it in Australia?
[00:16:26] Speaker C: Yes. So it's, it's based around a model where it's based around how many families you have. So if you had 10 families it might cost you $150 a quarter.
So. And that increases depending on how many families you have.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: So Marcus, you were saying there's a script. I wonder about the, the Bible script and I wonder about the, the creative response. Do I have to be able to think those things up? I mean that sounds like hard work.
[00:16:57] Speaker D: Yeah. So the, the call service stays the same every week or every time you run it again. We found that children love that. They really love the fact that they know what's coming next.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Ritual is great with small children.
[00:17:10] Speaker D: Yeah, they love it. They love ritual on the Bible story. The bit that does change every time is the Bible story and the creative response. And I'm delighted to say the things that Intergen will be able to provide to the churches here is basically a bank of over a hundred Bible stories with over a hundred creative responses.
So every time you're running one, you don't have to think, oh, what are we going to, you know, what's our Bible story this week? Even more difficult. What's the creative way we bring that to life? We've got it all written down. All the best of. It's like the hundred best of ones that we've done. So again, I think that makes it a lot easier for people to pick up and run with.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: And quite seriously, you don't need more than 100 stories with small children because you can well and truly repeat them all and like you do with your storybooks at home. Right. You can just tell us, yeah, tell them again in two years time or three years time or whatever and it'll be fresh as a daisy with a new bunch of kids. Or even the same bunch of kids.
[00:18:11] Speaker D: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's right.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: So is there a point at which kids age out of bubblechurch and what do they then do?
[00:18:19] Speaker D: It's a great question. So the first thing to say is as they get older. So I've got an 8 year old now turning 9. He is loving being part of the team on Bubble Church.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Fantastic.
[00:18:30] Speaker D: We are finding that we're getting intergenerational teams running bubblechurch. Older children doing the puppets. We even have this role where a child can be a service assistant. So my little boy loves being the service assistant. He keeps telling me how good he is at it, which I'm pleased he feels that way. But, you know, there will inevitably come a point where actually it's time to move on from Bubble Church. And I think that's why we want to work with churches to help them really manage those transition points. And we found that some churches have actually started to adopt little bits of Bubble Church into some of the. The other bits they do to help that transition so that when people move from one service to another, it doesn't feel alien.
But the other thing I would say is my experience overall is that what keeps people in church are the friendships and relationships that they make. And over those years of being part of Bubble Church, our hope and prayer. And what we encourage churches is that that's not like the only thing they do. They get involved in the church family and it's as they develop those relationships and friendships with other folk that they journey together into the next stage of what it is to worship God.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: So you're talking about intergenerational team.
Does anybody ever kind of come in and enjoy Bubble Church so much? They want to kind of go on the, go on the team and become part of the Bubble Church leadership.
[00:19:57] Speaker D: This is something we encourage every week. We want people to feel like they can join in. And yeah, we have, we have a section called Pray Help, Give. And it's just a section where we say if you'd like prayer for anything, we'd love to offer that. If you'd like to help in any way, we'd love you to come and help and get one of these T shirts.
And if you want to give in any way, then we'd love that of course as well. But in terms of the helping, we find that there's so many roles. There's welcome, there's refreshments, there's puppets. I mean, people love doing the puppets. So very early on we have people who come along to Bubble Church and you know, the following week they're part of the team.
Yeah.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: So my church. Safe hat just wants to say, I'm sure that you'd have to have done a working with children check 100%, so
[00:20:47] Speaker D: you have to do it safely. But I think, I think what's great is that desire to be involved is there. No. And so often we don't have that. Whereas with Bible church people, they're saying, I want to be involved.
Great.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Amanda, what is your hope for bubble church in Australia?
[00:21:03] Speaker C: Well, look, I've got a bold hope and a bold prayer that in three years time there would be 200 bubble churches.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: That's mad.
[00:21:14] Speaker C: It sounds mad, but like God can answer big prayers across Australia and New Zealand. But I think my real hope is that it will be such a gift and a blessing to churches that haven't maybe seen kids in their churches for a very long time.
And I. Look, it's really not about numbers, it's really about churches that would like to grow, giving them an opportunity to do that and giving them this great model of church, this new model of church to be able to do that. So to see those churches grow would be just wonderful.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: So if I was a uniting church that wanted to start bubble church or another denomination that wanted to start bubble church, what would I do, Amanda? How would I, how would I find you? How would I find out more about it? Who would I talk to?
[00:22:00] Speaker C: Yeah, so the first thing I do is go to the bubblechurch.org website and fill out an application form, maybe watch a few of the YouTube videos and then once you've done that, the Bubblechurch UK team will send it to Intergen.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: You fill in a form.
[00:22:18] Speaker C: You fill in a form?
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:19] Speaker C: An online form. And then I would get in touch with you, either have a coffee with you if you're local or have an interview, chat with you over the phone and then we'd see where you'd go from there.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: So. So we will be running more training in Australia.
[00:22:35] Speaker C: We will.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: And there was a few questions, I think on that form that there were things that you, you needed to say you'd agreed to, like, you know, that your church was on board and your church council was aware and stuff like that.
[00:22:47] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, because this is a church service and because this is church, we just want to make sure that your church leader is 100% on board, that your church council are like, yeah, we want to do this because we've just found that if the leadership are behind it, that makes such a difference. Yeah. So That's. That's kind of the main thing, really. And then you need someone. We call them the champion. They don't have to be the church leader, but just someone in your congregation who is going to be that person who is like, yes, bubble church, we want to make this happen. They'll be the point person with Intergen. They'll be the person that kind of rallies everyone locally and makes it happen. So they're the two main things.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Right. Well, look, I'm really excited about bubble Church. I think it's a really simple, easy way to grow ministry with particularly very small children and their families. And having been the mother of a small child in the not too distant past, I know it's a time in your life when people are looking for things to do with their families and their children. And often parents are thinking about, you know, how do I want my child to grow up? Do I want them to grow up to have fai?
It really is an exciting opportunity for us to be able to provide something that churches can pick up easily and encourage people in. Is there one last thing you would say about what it means to grow a thriving bubble church or how bubble church can be a thriving faith community?
[00:24:10] Speaker D: I think for us, we realized, only realized when we launched Bubble Church back in the day. It was only at that point we realized that we were meeting people where they were at. So we had an existing service and we thought that was accessible. But it was only when we launched Bible Church, we realized, no, this. This really is accessible and it's meeting people where they're at. And I think that's the start of people thriving because then they feel, yeah, this is, for me, this is a place I feel I can explore what it is to worship God.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Fantastic. Amanda, is there one last thing you'd love to say to us about bubble church in Australia?
[00:24:47] Speaker C: Yeah. So I think that bubble church is a great way to love people, and not just people that are all the same, but love all people, like Christ loves all people. So I think that's. Yeah, that's something that I would definitely say about bubble Church. One of the things that I really love about it.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Well, we shall follow Bubble Church with great interest, and we might have you back next year sometime to find out about those seven churches and how they're going and how it's going in the UK as well. Thank you, Marcus, and thank you, Amanda. See you next time.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to Thriving.
This podcast is hosted and produced by Sandy Brodine. If you have enjoyed Thriving, don't forget to like and subscribe. You might also like to share with your church community or friends and talk about how these ideas can help you grow your thriving community of faith. We'll see you next time.
