the big church day out

well the name of the event is pretty self-explanatory...

but to be more precise, this sunday, over 14,000 people gathered from different churches and different denominations, from all over the country and beyond, in the beautiful sussex countryside under a blue sky and warm sun to CELEBRATE ALL THAT IS GOOD. this was the motto of the day and one i'd like to apply to my life.

i was privileged to be able to help out since a friend was pretty much organising the whole thing. My role was to help welcome the artists/performers/speakers as they arrived... who included Diane Louise Jordan (yesss! my favourite ex-blue peter presenter!), Pete Greig, Steve Chalke, Delerious? (the main band of the event), and a whole variety of musical groups that performed at one of the three venues. i think i prefer being on the "serving" side, as you get a better picture of what's going on and it makes it all more real. so we were there from 7:30am until 1am, which made for a long day but not too strenuous to be honest and being mainly outside in amazing weather made me very happy! there was a really good, chilled atmosphere, with people of all ages and backgrounds.

it felt quite surreal, like a bubble of good vibes... but the point is not that this was just a 'nice day out' , but a prophetic statement of unity between churches in the UK, acknowledging that in Jesus we are family. The church, and by that i mean all people who follow Jesus, is the BODY of Christ - it doesn't make any sense that a body should be so divided. A body is made up of different parts with different roles but those parts need each other. They cannot function alone. Yet so often you find congregations or individuals isolating themselves from the body. Which is pretty much equivalent to self-multilation. Or we hear the different parts discouraging each other because they are doing things differently. But maybe this is necessary in a world full of such variety. Maybe it's OK that we don't all look the same, that we don't all prioritise the same things. Can we not still stand together and celebrate the good, and stand against the bad. The bad not being the kind of songs we sing or clothes we wear, but more like injustice, treating some people as if they are worth less than others, exclusion, selfishness and greed... then, change might begin to happen.

anyways. it was a good day. :-)