Louder Than The Music

In the UK for three weeks in August, Soul Survivor takes over a large show-ground in South England. This has been happening for 17 years, thousands of young people from all over the UK taking their tents and descending on Shepton Mallet to experience amazing worship and great teaching.

Sadly this year I couldn't head to any of the weeks of the festivals due to work commitments, yet I had the opportunity to pop down for the Saturday to meet up with the young people of my church and the youth workers.

They had already had a great week, enjoying a great Bible study with Andy Croft, great worship lead by some of the best young worship leaders and great teaching from the preachers/speakers.

During the evenings at Soul Survivor there are gigs, with the best in Christian music playing the night away, according to the youth of my church. I am told that the Dweeb and Gentlemen gigs were not to be missed and they enjoyed them massively. Others that played the festival were bands like LZ7, 29th Chapter and Joe Brooks who I am also told were fantastic.

Myself, my wife and a friend of ours headed down on the Saturday very early, nothing worse than waking up early on a Saturday morning after a long week of work, but deep down we knew it was going to be worth it. The rain was pouring heavily on the M4 on the way down and driving was difficult, we also missed our junction to come off the M4, which wasn't due to the weather but due to myself and the driver being just too busy talking about music, this added another 12 miles to our trip!

Once there we headed to the main meeting and met up with our friends, Beth Croft led the morning worship, leading the thousands of worshippers with new songs that they had been singing during the festival. Her husband Andy Croft led a great Bible study on Jesus being the 'I Am'.

During the afternoon the site offered many things to do, including various seminars, from bible studies, talks on injustice to worship workshops. I decided to take the youth group to a seminar, sadly after walking for what seemed like ages we couldn’t find the seminar and decided to stop off at the Cafe for a coffee and hot chocolate and to join in the Cafe house quiz that was on going, sad to say but we didn’t win.

The evening meeting had worship led by the great Tom Field, another new name for some, he is a 17 year old worship leader from New Zealand and led everyone with maturity and humbleness. What an amazing time of worship and teaching that happened that night. Danielle Strickland spoke that evening about injustice and how we can make a difference through our actions, an uplifting message reminding us we are the light of the world and we have a job to do on this earth.



Overall what a great day we had out at Soul Survivor and it gave us the bug to go next summer and enjoy the wind, rain, mud, camping and great teaching and worship.

Jono