Soul Survivor grew out of an Anglican church, St Andrew’s Chorleywood, that was equipping Christians to move in the power of the Holy Spirit through the ‘New Wine’ family conferences.
It was clear from the growth in the youth work at New Wine that something separate was needed for young people so in 1993 Soul Survivor launched its first annual five-day conference in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. This first event hosted just under 2,000 people and the number of delegates has grown every year since, in 2007 reaching over 28,000 people.
This now means there are a number of events held each summer to be able to accommodate everybody. Soul Survivor events are aimed at secondary school age and we have two of these in Somerset and one further north (in 2007 this was Cheshire, in 2008 it will be Stafford). Since 2004 we have also held a separate event for students and twenty-somethings called Momentum.
We also keep ourselves busy the rest of the year with events such as Soul Sista one-day conferences (there are different ones for the Soul Survivor and Momentum age groups), a SoulNet youth leaders retreat and SoulNet regional day conferences.
There are also six international Soul Survivor centres across the world that share our vision and values and hold annual events for the young people of Australia, Holland, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA.
That all sounds nice and straightforward but as you can imagine there have been a number of adventures and many interesting moments along the way where we’ve stepped out in faith, scared ourselves stupid and then seen God do wonderful things!
Soul Action/ SOULINTHECITY Durban 2009
Of course the adventure doesn’t end there. With God continually sharing his heart with us for the last, the least and the lost of this world, we have set up a partnership with our friends at Tearfund called Soul Action. The aim is to provide practical opportunities for people to live lives of compassion that reflect the heart of the God we love and serve. Read more about Soul Action at www.soulaction.org...
As part of this we’re currently planning to take as many people as possible on a trip to South Africa in 2009. We want to resource, equip and encourage the churches and charities in the city of Durban in their desire to share the love of Jesus in their communities. We’ll be working closely to see what is needed there and how we can best serve, as there is no ‘one-size fits all’ model of mission.
We want to encourage sustainable initiatives that will be able to continue long after we have packed up and gone home. As part of this testing process we’ll be sending small teams out to Durban in 2008 to get involved and we hope to develop opportunities for gap years, internships and placements too.
Keep an eye on the SOULINTHECITY Durban website www.soulinthecitydurban.com for further details...
