Joyful Noise Club

Feb 8

by Pastor Marty and Wendy O’Rourke

Joyful Noise Club is Church of Messiah’s (Chesapeake, VA) outreach to area young people with differing abilities, especially those with Down Syndrome or Autism. For many years, we met in the Church’s Fellowship Hall three Tuesday nights a month. Typically we’d start by serving pizza, followed by some fun and messy games, singing, worship, a Bible teaching, and prayer.

When Covid hit, we switched to Zoom gatherings every Tuesday at 7 p.m. We felt it’s important to meet weekly now because several members lost their jobs due to Covid, many have underlying health conditions, and all of them miss their friends. By God’s grace, their feelings of loneliness and loss are replaced with joy, hope and faith through our meetings. A number of parents have told us how much their young people appreciate and look forward to the Club.

As members sign-on each week, it’s fun to watch them greet each other and ask how their friends are doing. After we open with a prayer, I lead songs and worship with the guitar. Zoom is terrible for music, but that doesn’t stop us, and we definitely live up to our name of Joyful Noise.

We usually ask people ahead of time to bring a certain item to the meeting. Pastor Marty then features that item in a game, followed by a related Bible teaching. Themes have centered around flashlights, costumes, artwork, hats, sunglasses, and even empty toilet paper rolls!

We then pray and encourage each other as the Holy Spirit leads. One young man reported that his neck was healed soon after Jenny Jenson prayed for him, so he then asked her to pray for his shoulder. Praise God! This is the Body of Christ at work. Some other highlights:

My dad, Dr. David Borst, gave a Zoom demonstration of his instrument, the bassoon, and shared how God’s Spirit wants to use each of us as His instrument.
Since we couldn’t have our usual in-person Christmas dinner, we invited a professional artist to join us online and draw digital caricatures of each member.
Instead of our annual Christmas candlelight program in the sanctuary, we did a simple Christmas pageant on Zoom.

Check out Joyful Noise Club’s Facebook page, with photos and news about our meetings. Even better, join us on Zoom sometime! And please pray that God continues to lead and guide this very special ministry in 2021.

Marty O’Rourke is the Rector at Church of the Messiah in Chesapeake, VA. Marty and Wendy together coordinate the Joyful Noise Club.