‘God is love’, young people say it in one word
27 July 2007
Earlier this month, as part of a challenge at the 21st Summer Madness event, nearly 250 young people described God in a word that holds meaning for them. The God Challenge which launched for the first time at the Ireland-based event encouraged young people between the ages of 9 and 28 to describe God in just one word. The crowd gathered around a blank white board and stuck descriptions of God on the wall ranging from 'saviour' and 'friend' to 'kind' and 'gentle'.The most popular word used was 'love'with some 65%ofthose who attended associating God with 'love'.
According to Ray Khan, Candidates Secretary for Church Army who came up with the idea, the purpose of the challenge was toget people thinking about God using few words; Ray felt it was an important task as many young people usually found it a challenge to express theirunderstanding of God into one word.
"It was great to see that young people still associate God with love," says Ray. "They have many different descriptions of Him but ultimately 'love' was the overriding description.The vast majority of words were about God caring, loving and knowing them".
Summer Madness is Ireland's largest Christian festival and one of the largest in Europe with over 5000 people coming together for 5-10 days for a mixture of worship, teaching, music and sports.As part of Summer Madness, some 1,300 young people get involved in StreetReach where they go out into the toughest parts of the city to work alongside local community groups and churches.The God Challenge which debuted at this year's event will be a regular feature at the festival.
This year's Summer Madness also saw the launch of the Xplore branding. Xplore is Church Army's new global gap year programme which gives young people aged 18-25 the opportunity to serve God at home and abroad for a year. The branding was launched at Summer Madness to raise awareness of the initiative and to inform young people about the work of Church Army and opportunities that exist with an organization that is on the cutting edge of mission.
For more information about Xplore, please see www.xploreglobal.org.uk
To find out more about Summer Madness, please visit www.summermadness.co.uk
