Newday has had its 20th birthday and I’d thought I’d add some thanks and reflections on this milestone.

I admit to being pretty sceptical at the beginning. Its creation seemed to me to be a reflection of a poor attitude on behalf of Newfrontiers. There we go again always having to do our own thing. Why was the movement I was a part so stand-offish to other evangelicals? Did we really think we were better than everyone else? Why, I grumbled, couldn’t we all just go to Soul Survivor like everyone else? Hmm. Perhaps the fallout amongst our movement from the tragic case of Milke Pilavachi would have been significantly different if we had.

Next on my list of grumbles were some famously, or perhaps notoriously, long evening messages. What were we thinking of preaching to teenagers, or to anyone for that matter, for more than an hour?

Then I grumbled about the balance of the seminars, not enough social justice for my liking, not enough helping kids live in a consumer culture. To be honest that last one is still true but it also goes for pretty much every Christian conference in the West no matter who it’s aimed at.

Anyway, someone must have become fed up with my grumbling because they asked me to do a seminar (2008) on the environment. Then later they asked me to run the Global Cafe which had a heady mix of justice and awesome milkshakes. That shut me up, I guess. So at some point or other I had clearly became much more positive about the whole Newday project. In 2009 I was doing some press releases and local radio stuff for the team and blogging about it every day.

Now, I’m sending my own kids to Newday with a small group from Sweden. And each year they love it, each year they want to go back, each year they meet with God. I’m grateful they hear the Word of God preached unapologetically as if it were, you know, true. I’m grateful that they trust God to change lives in mind, body and soul. They expect young people to repent so their sins can be forgiven, that God can heal their bodies as well as their wounds, that God can call them to plant churches, reach nations, care for the poor, become leaders, live holy lives.

So Newday, thanks very much, keep going as long as God calls you to it.