Blog: Spring Harvest 2011

Apr 27 2011

LTTM's Jono writes about his day trip to the UK's Spring Harvest conference.



I could only go to Spring Harvest this year for one day, on what they called Day 4, or for us normal calender people that was Friday 22nd April 2011. 

Spring Harvest festival has always been a large part of my church's yearly outing. As a church ever Easter we would all go as families and drive down to Minehead. Once you were on the Seven crossing and leaving Wales you knew it was going to be six days of festival madness, where you could hang with friends, see some great bands, meet new people and just be family together.

I have been going to Spring Harvest every year for the most part of my teenage life, thankfully the other teenagers and their families would come as well, which really helped in growing a strong friendship within our youth group, being able to worship God and do things together brought everyone closer together.

After getting our wrist bands we headed straight to the Big Top which is were the majority of the main meetings are held. We got there just as the early morning family service was going on, this is a great way as a family to start the day, mixing a lot of interactive storytelling (told by the wonderful story teller Bob Hartman) and child friendly worship. It was great to see everyone interacting together as a family in worship to God.

After a quick glance at the program guide, showing what was happening all over the site, my wife and I decided to head to the Worship Zone as Vicky Beeching and Pete Broadbent had been leading a series on all aspects of worship leading. Today they were looking at the character of a worship leader. The content was fantastic, some great thoughts came from the front, but once questions were open to the floor regarding the topic Should non Christians be involved in a worship team the discussion took some interesting twists. You can read a lot more about that topic on Vicky's Blog

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As we wanted to fit as much as possible into the day, we then headed to a seminar on making a community feeling in your church. It was at this time we met up with our friends from our church. The seminar gave practical thoughts on how to be involved in the community and how basically to show God's love to people.



Lunch finished and we headed for a few hours with our friends kids to the theme park, taking in as many rides as possibe. I was dragged onto the pirate ship that rocked back and forward a good number of times. Before we knew it was time to head off to a seminar with Rich Bull from Trent regarding Electric Guitars in worship.



Rich gave a great insight of his guitar set up, it was a really geeky musician seminar about pedals and amps and how he created the Trent guitar sound. This was a very good seminar for someone like myself who is trying to get the best out of electric guitars in worship, so it was a great insight, thank you Rich.

Trent

A spot of Tea was next, before again sprinting to the Main Meeting in the Big Top. This is the main meeting of the whole day, where everyone gathers to sing in worship and hear some preaching, kind of like a Sunday service with thousands of people. The worship was lead by the stunning Trent, and this was the first time I had been able to hear those Nottingham lads play. Those guys know how to create a great sound, making a solid wall of sound as worship to God. They played two songs from their Burn Bright album, which everyone seemed to be singing out loud, from memory I think they played a few Vineyard classic tracks, including 'Hungry' and 'I Will Worship', they also ended with the Delirious classic 'Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble'. A great evening of prayer and worship and a very different way of looking at a bible study, which was from Issiah 58.



After the thousands left the Big Top, my family and I headed to the main area of the Minehead site to explore what books and CDs were on offer. It's a great resource area for exploring this, with many stalls of different Christian charities, giving people an opportunity to investigate what they do.



Spring Harvest are renowned for their After Hours gigs. Around 10:30pm each night there is a great Christian band rocking out so people could dance the night away if they still have the energy. Over the years from going to these After Hours gig I have had the opportunity to see Tom & Olly, Quench, Bottlerocket, Cathy Burton, Portland, Steve, yfriday, Kato, Steve Leach, Kindle and Phatfish to name a few.

This year I think I picked the right day to go, I got to see the amazing Dweeb, who sounded as good as ever. From the word go, with their British punk anthemic sound, these guys know how to drive people along with them on their gig journey. The band played a large amount of songs from their newest album 'Feels Like Dynamite', with highlights being the single 'It's Ok', plus 'Silence Is Golden' and the stunning 'Playing In The Snow'. Tim sounded vocally as powerful as ever, giving every inch of his voice to belt out the tunes, you know with Tim he will give you 100% with his distinctive voice. The Badgerman's guitar playing was as clever and solid as ever, not missing anything. Matt and Dave both filling out the rest of the sound for this to be a fantastic gig. The big surprise for me was that the band hinted at a single coming out next month, keep checking back to LTTM for big news on that in the next few weeks.



Overall Spring Harvest for me was a great day out, and well worth coming down for. Hearing thousands of people singing praises to God in the Big Top to the music of Trent will never get old. It was great to see/hear all that Spring Harvest has to offer. My parents had been there all week and I asked them what some of their highlights were of the week, and they pointed out Stephen Gaukroger's Morning Bible Studies were influential and powerful, with Pastor Agu & Danielle Strickland preaching some great powerful messages. My father also said Vicky Beeching's passion for promoting the amazing work of Compassion was another great thing to see from the front of the Big Top stage. So another year is over for Spring Harvest, can't wait to see what happens next year.


Jono

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