Soul Survivor

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Soul Survivor is a Christian charity based in Watford, UK. It runs Christian summer camps in the UK. The biggest of these festivals occurs every August at the Royal Bath and West Showground, near Shepton Mallet. There are other Soul Survivor events around the world, not all aimed at young people, these are organised by charitable bodies in each country and are not centrally administered from the UK.

There is also a church, founded shortly after the Soul Survivor Festivals and under the same leadership, known as "Soul Survivor Watford". This is a separate registered charity, and meets in Watford, close to the Soul Survivor ('Ministries') offices.

Contents 1 History 1.1 2005 1.2 2007 1.3 2008 2 Momentum 3 Outreach 4 External links 5 See also 6 References

[edit] History

Soul Survivor conferences began in 1993 and grew out of the New Wine family conferences. Like New Wine, the Soul Survivor conferences were originally overseen by a church called St Andrews, based in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire (the vicar at the time was David Pytches).

The New Wine conferences inspired Mike Pilavachi (then youthworker of St Andrews church) and one of the members of his church youth club Matt Redman, to have thousands of young people praising God together at their own festival. The first conference happened in 1993 when 1,896 young people attended the first Soul Survivor festival. The event split across two weeks in 1995 (Soul Survivor A and Soul Survivor B) and by 2006, attendance at the events was around 25,000 over the two separate weeks.^[1]

In recent years, the task of leading worship has been undertaken by Tim Hughes. However, he has since moved to Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB), where he is highly involved with Worship Central, a joint Soul Survivor/HTB initiative. The task is now headed up by the Canadian youngster Ben Cantelon. Soul Survivor has also branched into other countries such as Malaysia, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada and Australia. These international conferences are administered locally and agree to work under the values of Soul Survivor. It is usual for a small team from Soul Survivor's Watford staff to attend the international events.

[edit] 2005

2005 saw the first Momentum festival, which ran after weeks A&B - aimed at 18-30 year olds.

[edit] 2007

2007 saw an additional week (Week C) of Soul Survivor, located at the Cheshire agricultural showground. This was to cater more easily for people from Scotland and the north of England, who would otherwise have to travel for many hours to reach the festval.

[edit] 2008

Week A is going to be at the Stafford Showground with weeks B and C at the Royal Bath and West Showground.

[edit] Momentum

Momentum is a conference run in the same format as Soul Survivor, but is aimed at students and those in their twenties. The first five day conferences took place in 2005. Momentum 2006 saw just under 5000 people attend between the 19th and 24th of August. Momentum 2007 took place from 20th - 24th July, preceding the main Soul Survivor weeks A and B by two weeks, and was attended by just over 2500 delegates.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Outreach

The Soul Survivor staff believe very strongly that the worship of God is more than just singing songs; it is about putting faith into action, "getting out onto the streets" and proclaiming social justice. In the US their slogan was "actions speak louder". As a result the charity runs outreach events like London's Soul in the City (summer 2004) and supported the Festival:Manchester event in 2003. Thousands of young people come from all over the UK and even the world to work in multi-cultural communities on very diverse projects to help improve the quality of life for the people in each city. At Soul Survivor 2005 the creation of a new mission charity was announced. Soul Action aims to bring the good news of God’s Kingdom to the last, the least and the lost. As soon as it was formed, the charity announced plans for a major outreach event to be staged in Durban, South Africa, in 2009.

Soul Survivor are also strongly in support of Hope 08, a united national outreach project.

[edit] External links

• The Soul Survivor website
• The Soul Action website
• The Momentum website
• The Worship Central website
• Soul Survivor Myspace
• Soul Survivor Picture Gallery

[edit] See also

• World Wide Message Tribe
• New Wine - a similar event aimed at families, which also originated from St. Andrews.
• Survivor Records - a record label affiliated with Soul Survivor, distributed by Kingsway Communications.

[edit] References