You know you’re not at your normal youth festival when you walk into the shower block and hear worship songs being sung from the cubicles.
Last week I was at the youth behemoth that is the Newday Festival, held each year at the Norfolk Agricultural Showground just outside of Norwich in the east of England. It’s a journey for us from Sweden to get there, but after about ten hours of queues, planes and trains we found ourselves on site with the marvellous crew from Hope Church, Ipswich who kindly agreed to host us. We had taken six young people including my own two kids, and Emma joined us so it was a family trip! And we had great weather although it was obvious how dry the summer had been – the site could generously be described as dusty!
Without further ado, here are some of my observations and appreciations of Newday!
I’m no expert on youth festivals, Christian or any other kind, so I’ve no idea how unique this is but I was impressed by the happy diversity I saw. I reckon at least half the attendees, as well as the speakers or worship leaders, were black. It made me appreciate the strength of the black church in the UK. They’re not half the population but they sent half the Christian young people to this massive event. Thank God for them! I didn’t see all that many Indians or Asians although I enjoyed several great conversations with three young lads who were all born in Hong Kong.
To gather over 10,000 teenagers onto a single site and feed, wash, entertain and engage them is a massive undertaking. It’s made possible by over a 1000 volunteers giving up a week’s holiday to do car park duty, clean toilets and showers, and spend long long hours making milkshakes. It’s made possible by another group of volunteers putting up tents, booking coaches, cooking meals, and spending the hours between 11.30 and 1 am telling assorted teenagers to ‘shut up and go to sleep’.
Newday is underpinned by incredible volunteer-ism. It is also marked by a consistent culture of generosity as evidenced by the young people giving almost £115,000 towards church planting and the mission of Newday. Although it might be worth noting that at a much smaller Newday 18 years ago the offering was almost exactly the same. Do kids these days have less disposable income? Something to watch.
It is also a place where God is at work in the lives of those who attend:
If you’re sceptical of the healing claims I’d encourage you to read this testimony, or this one, and I expect that some of the 344 healings reported this year will include similar stories!
But Newday also has friendships at the heart of it and I loved reading Jez Field’s recollections after 20 years of attending Newday.
Then there is the teaching. And this year Newday arranged its teaching on this theme:
Grounded in Genesis 1-3 they sought to teach why we are made in one image, why there are two sexes, and that there are three realities to marriage (biological, anthropological and theological). Alongside seminars on spiritual disciplines, youth Alpha, learning to lead, what it means to be a young man or woman. It was an attempt to help Christian young people confidently live according to the Bible. You can listen to the recordings here.
One outstanding talk in the evening was from Mbonisi Malaba (Zimbabwean leading a church in Kenya) on seeing Jesus in the life of Joseph. Give it a listen.
Then there is the worship. I know crowds all cheer when the band play their favourite song, but there was a spine chilling moment on the last night after singing crowd favourite, Solid Ground. This huge spontaneous cry of praise went up. It was a brief and awesome moment as the multitudes cried out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God’.
Goosebumps.
Sacrificial giving, a culture of generosity, confidence in the Bible, the healing power of God, passionate unbridled worship, and warm, deep relationships; what’s not to love?
See you there next year?
More on Newday
Newday keeps showing up in these reflections — here’s where else it’s come up:
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