The Word Alive Christian holiday convention usually takes place close to Easter each year, it’s a spin off from Spring Harvest and the Keswick Convention. However, the 2024 convention has been cancelled due to the Pontins site at Prestatyn being closed without warning.
Some people have suggested that the week could be replaced with a few smaller, regional events, to help cater for students and others interested. I want to make a radical suggestion that goes one stage further.
What if we have thousands of events at about the same time next year with a focus on joyful worship and solid, resurrection focused, gospel centred Biblical preaching. We could make sure that these events are free and open to all with invites going out to our friends and neighbours.
I suggest the date for these events should be Sunday 31st March. Let’s use local church buildings as the venues and let’s call the event “Easter.”
There is a seriousness to this proposition. Back in 2020, the pandemic meant that a lot of big Christian festivals were not able to run. I argued at the time that this was a fantastic opportunity for such events to take a rest, a sabbatical if you like. This would remind us that we were not dependent upon them. Sadly, most events instead worked heavily on running virtual events and there seemed to be a lot of talk about fear that finances might be hit and such events wouldn’t be able to continue. I think we missed an opportunity.
The opportunity was there to celebrate the local church. What if we were to use the opportunity next year to do it then instead. It might be that as well as the specific Easter Sunday service, that some churches might want to group together to do some events, outreach, teaching, worship, fellowship in partnership together.
I appreciate that there are other events running, New Wine, Keswick, Spring Harvest and organisers may be tempted to see this as an opportunity to attract people from Word Alive to their event, hoping to keep them in future years. What if instead, they agreed in partnership with Word Alive to also take a break next year. What a powerful message that would send out.
Faithroots 