Newday 2024
Last week marked 20 years since Newday began. In fact, our eldest son was at that first ever camp, which some of you may remember as the one when they had to evacuate everyone after torrential rain! Newday has since become one of the largest Christian events for young people in the UK. As a parent, I know how transformative Newday was for each of our three sons as they grew and matured in their faith. King’s took more young people to Newday than ever before this year, and in today’s guest blog, Tex Chettiar, our Youth Pastor, tells us more about how they got on last week. You may also like to read this post, written for Think Theology by our Teaching pastor, Andrew Wilson, with his reflections on two decades of Newday.
We have just returned from an excellent week at Newday. This year we took 156 young people, 31 youth leaders and 15 catering team to Newday. The week was filled with fun, and there were many opportunities for young people to encounter God. Over the week we had a number of young people meet God powerfully, in a variety of ways. Many young people came to faith for the first time, and a large number recommitted their lives to Christ.
One of the highlights for us happened on Thursday night. On that evening, there was an opportunity to pray for healing and be filled with the Holy Spirit. After the meeting we had young people share testimonies of healing! One particular young person shared how he was healed from tendonitis in his heel. He mentioned that before Newday, squatting down would be painful, but after praying, he was able to squat down multiple times without any pain! On the same evening, it was incredibly powerful to see many of our young people filled with the Holy Spirit and then respond to being courageous Christians in their everyday lives and wanting to make a change in their schools and friendship groups.
In the coming weeks please could we ask you to keep praying for the following:
1. Pray that seeds will fall on good soil for those young people who have made a first-time commitment to Christ. Pray that they will continue to know the grace and mercy of Christ as they return to ‘normal life’.
2. Pray for those young people who felt a sense of call to various areas of influence and leadership. Let’s pray they would keep growing in their gifts and continue to be led by the Spirit.
3. Please pray for our youth leaders and other amazing volunteers who freely gave up their time last week to serve our young people. Pray that they would know rest and peace.
4. Pray for the young people to continue to know a sense of community and support from other young people as they continue their faith journey.
Tex Chettiar is Youth Pastor at King’s. He is married to Emma, and they are based on the Catford site.
