Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Big and small on the same day
The Bracknell Mainstage Festival this last weekend was one of the best run and the biggest crowds we have seen in five years of running Mainstage events. The weekend opened up with a giant Family Funday with upwards of 5,000 going through the event. I hosted the programme with Simon Thomas and there were many opportunities to present the Gospel. In the evening around 1,000 young people attended a Battle of the Bands event and then another 750 or so for the Church in the Park gathering on Sunday morning.On Saturday Jono also led a Miracle Street team to Shanklin on the Isle of Wight for a Parklife event. Jono reports "It was great to be back for our tenth event on the island of the summer! The weather was scorching and we had a good crowd turn up. A rather warm straitjacket escape got the message across as we looked to build a foundation for the evening event. We often find that without a big budget band for the evening it's hard to get people to stay around for ‘church’ if they have been around all afternoon. Shanklin was no exception. Maybe we need to explore ways of making the evening work by merit rather than piggy-backing it with a Funday? But we know that several hundred people came along, enjoyed the day, saw the church in a new light and were challenged to think about faith in a new light too?
