What role do summer events and festivals play in your youth ministry? Sheffield-based
youth leader Joel Toombs reflects on his own experience and explores the trend of
churches structuring their youth work programme around a festival visit, potentially
hundreds of miles from their local community.
A couple of years ago one of my young people persuaded a few of his friends to join him on a summer camp. They had a great time and two of them were so profoundly affected by the meetings that they responded to the ‘altar call’ to become Christians. On returning home neither began attending church or the youth events we put on. However, when the time came round to go away to the same camp again, their positive memories proved not only strong enough to persuade them to return, but also even more of their friends joined them and several of them responded in the same way to the gospel message. Brilliant! Yet again, we were faced with how to keep hold of them; the usual evangelistic and discipleship courses were unlikely to work with these lads, whose cigarette breaks seemed longer than their combined attention spans.
Thankfully, this year we stumbled across a way of keeping them engaged (through a prayer room and the use of dance music) and not only are they all still praying and attending weekly worship events, but more of their friends are joining them here at home; seeing miraculous healings and getting saved by their prayers. They have even catalysed the other young people into block booking a classroom at school to offer prayer for other students at lunchtimes. I find myself thinking ‘this is it!’ It feels so much better having young people responding and get passionate right here than away in a different environment. It can’t be denied that summer festivals undoubtedly deliver boundless riches, yet we also know the stuttering frustrations of the post-camp lows – is it a false triumph? Will it last? Maybe it’s time to ask whether these camps and festivals can be harnessed in a better way by youth leaders to cope with our changing times?
Reaping the benefits
Each Soul Survivor week sees hundreds of young people respond to the call to give their lives to God for the first time. We all know why. Youth worker Beth Tash describes summer camps as, ‘amazing for great relationship-building time, for access to the best speakers in the country, a chance to explore and look at big faith questions... A time once a year where the young people are totally away from their normal setting and they are offered an opportunity to reaffirm their faith and make an ‘official’ commitment for the first time especially if they’ve been in church forever...’
Mandy Toombs, of girl’s-work based band ‘Golddigger’ (and my wife) expands: ‘Some of the best things to happen at conferences are not just when young people get up to respond to an altar call, but when they hear about Jesus then come back to the tents and ask “what was all that about?” and then the whole group have a big discussion about what it means to be a Christian and share their experiences and answer each other’s questions.’ Or have you thought of this potential benefit that a youth leader reflected upon: ‘It’s much more difficult to deliver biblical teaching on underage drinking when you know what they all get up to on a Friday night ...and they know you know that. An outside speaker on a big stage can say anything without risk of individuals feeling personally got at.’
Acknowledging the hurdles
But we also know the obstacles too, as youth worker Claire Farley describes: ‘I think it can be unhelpful to focus too much on summer highs at festivals because God is with us all the time, and it was a real challenge to help the young people connect back through church services when they had been at an event which was so tailored for their needs. Ironically, sometimes it can seem unhelpful when things are directly developed for young people, because their ‘real’ lives don’t match up!’
Claire continues: ‘The sea of our youth work gets a tsunami injection every summer – and the young people love to surf it; but when we end up relying on summer festivals even though we know a ‘wipeout’ of some kind is likely – what kind of expectations are we creating in our disciples? I am not sure how helpful it is to use festivals for young people to become Christians. Sometimes it might be good, but I prefer the idea of working with people in their home life world and helping them draw nearer to God in their ‘everyday’ rather than a bit of a mad holiday romance type of connection’. Hers is a sentiment shared by Ben Gibbins from Sheffield: ‘I get frustrated by summer events. Why? Because six weeks, or even a week later, the ‘high’ they’ve experienced has disappeared...’
Your can read the rest of this article in the June issue of Youthwork magazine. Out now!
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