For the two weeks running up to Easter, the Pontins holiday site in Prestatyn, North Wales, was the venue for the Word Alive Christian family conference.
Now in its seventh year, the event has matured. It is no longer new and has shed that prefix from its name. It continues to be a winning formula with around 3000 attending each week. Fabulous children’s work sits alongside world-class Bible teaching.
This year Don Carson headlined with an exposition on Jeremiah, and a great supporting cast, including Ted Turnau, Richard Coekin and Sharon James in the first week and Becky Pippert, Melvin Tinker and Alasdair Paine in the second, gave real depth to the teaching. During the evening meetings or celebrations, the focus was on our King and his Kingdom from Luke chapters 4-6.
Carson – our stomach!
One participant commented: ‘Don Carson is such a mine of biblical wisdom and knowledge and it was both sobering and a real treat to sit under his teaching on Jeremiah. As that prophet makes so clear how faithless the people of Israel were despite how much God had shown his love to them, Don reminded us of the great revivals in Wales and other parts of the UK, and yet how faithless we are as a country now – how quickly we have forgotten. On a lighter note, speaking of the fact that, under the New Covenant, ministers no longer have to come from the tribe of Levi, Don told us that he is not a teacher because of his lineage. Rather we can think of him as one part of the body of Christ, in his case a stomach that takes in nourishment from God’s Word and distributes it to the rest of the body!’
Sessions aimed at students and internationals mean that this really is a conference for the whole church family.
The organisers are clearly keen not to let the grass grow under their feet. A climbing wall, provided and staffed by Adventure Plus, was a great addition alongside the plethora of inflatable fun in the Clownfish zone for kids of every age and stage. For the more creative types there was an opportunity to get involved on either side of the camera with a movie, filmed, edited and premiered at World Alive in just five days!
Heaven in a nightclub
In the middle evening, instead of the usual style evening celebrations, Bill Edgar, Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary and accomplished jazz pianist, presented ‘Heaven in a Nightclub’. This gave an insight into how jazz music developed during the slavery period in the US and the influence on it of Gospel and Spiritual music. In the second week he was joined by Ruth Naomi Floyd whose renditions of the songs and the backing of an extraordinary jazz trumpeter were ‘the real deal’. An unexpected and almost equal delight were the sign language team, as they signed along with real passion to tracks such as ‘Lay My Burden Down’!
Next Easter
Looking to next year’s event, which will again run twice from March 28 – April 2 and April 2–6, Nigel Beynon, director of Word Alive said: ‘We’re very excited about Word Alive 2015. David Cook will be our main speaker and we’re working on others for adults and students, along with children and youth groups, who will deliver an excellent programme – nourishing the heart with large doses of fun. We’ve had to weigh up the pros and cons of holding the event over Easter itself – balancing serving the local church with not disappointing people through holding only one event. We hope guests will be able to come to what suits them and their local church’.
Word Alive is maturing well. It would be a great way to spend four or five days next Easter.
