Youth Voice Blog: Summer Festivals

Hello and welcome back to the Youth Voice blog! I’m Emily Jeffery, Youth Voice and Young Leadership Development advisor for Bath and Wells, and I’m the new face behind this blog. I’m here to help schools and churches to listen well to the young people in our diocese and create opportunities for them to be effective agents of change! Exciting!

Over the last couple of weeks that our children and young people have headed back to school – maybe even starting a new school, college, sixth form or apprenticeship.

Many of those will be returning with a fire inside them after spending the summer at various youth festivals: being inspired by some amazing teaching, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and they’ll have spent time worshipping, praying together, and discovering new gifts, joys and friendships.

‘What was your highlight, lowlight, and spiritual insight’

I asked them how their experiences at Satellites had impacted them for the new school year.

They said:

• Maybe I want to try join CU again if it still runs and hopefully I’ll be able to connect to more people
• It gave me spiritual motivation at the beginning of a school year which is always helpful
• It has definitely revitalized my faith just reminding me of the joy of the Lord.
• It’s encouraged me to try to new things and try to keep positive at work

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It’s not just the teens who have been at festivals this summer. Ellie, age 5, went to New Wine and here’s what she said about her week…

Highlight: The leaders and storytelling in Groundbreakers. The songs and stories. Playing with my church friends. Watching the pop-up parables in the afternoon.

Lowlight: I was sad on the first Groundbreakers because I didn’t know what was going to happen and it was too loud.

Spiritual insight: The stories of Daniel helped me learn to trust in God. The songs taught me to be bold and brave.

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…and Hannah took her young people to Spree South West, and she shared

Highlight:

• Seeing around six young people (all boys) from our youth cafe, that don’t come to church on Sunday, join us and have the best time (one of them told me an hour in they wanted it to last a week).
• Seeing the year 8 boys look out for the year 5 boys! Some of the youth made friends with other youth groups, which we haven’t seen before, but it was great to see them connecting with others from elsewhere in the South West.
• Our Youth and our team all absolutely adore Spree and love spending time all together – it’s such a joy to take them, and to see our leaders grow in faith alongside the youth

Lowlight: We had a couple injuries over the weekend.

Spiritual insight: It just felt like a weekend of JOY! Getting to walk alongside the young people and other team and see them dip their toes into worship and learning about faith.

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How great are these stories?! It’s so wonderful to hear about how God has been moving over the summer, encountering the littlest to the biggest!

Might you be able to offer your youth group some time next summer to help them out with festival season? Why not chat with the youth leaders in your church and find out what that looks like?

Emily

Did you go with a group to Satellites or any other festivals? Get in touch with Emily to let her know your thoughts and/or share your testimony.