FYT @ Glastonbury 07

The feet that bring good news may wear muddy wellies!

I’m fresh (if that’s the right word) back from the Glastonbury festival and have been reflecting on the work that Frontier Youth Trust has been involved with in the Sanctuary Marquee at the festival which is organised by Somerset Churches Together. We are there, as part of the Christian Church, to ‘demonstrates the love of Christ in Action by offering festival goers a warm welcome, space to reflect and a willingness to listen’. On the ground (or should I say in the mud!) this includes; providing somewhere for up to 140 people to sleep when they have lost their tent/faculties, giving out 10,000 cups of water to dehydrated passers by, watching over someone who has crashed on drugs or drink, listening and laughing with festival goers, painting faces, playing games, making banners, praying with someone who wants to reconnect with God… 70 volunteers providing 24 hours a day cover through out the festival in the name of Christ.

We adopted a theme at the festival this year – ‘who are you’ – and reinforced it by getting people to paint portraits of each other, in banner making and by playing around with some huge mirrors – the giant kaleidoscope was particularly popular! I was struck by the significance of this simple theme/message and was reminded of how central it is to quality relational youth work. It was great to be alongside people in an unconditional way, to experience the power of ‘open voluntary relationships’ that led into some amazing conversations about life the universe and everything. So many encounters stand out in mind as people wanted to check out why we were providing this service to the festival. We had all agreed that it was a ‘no preach zone’ – however the God conversations were plentiful and felt very authentic. “I can’t cope with church but if it was like this – wow!” someone said. All too often other agendas dominate our youth work – numbers for the funding applications, conversions to keep the ‘elders’ happy, education and employment to keep the government on board or ‘journal fodder’ for the latest youth work training you signed up for. It’s easy to lose sight of the power of just being with young people, to take time to ask, ‘who are you’? ... the rest of this article appears in Youthwork Magazine as a 'Story from the edge' - read on...