New Wine Article for the Christ Church Spotlight magazine

New Wine is a Christian Holiday that takes place in the Bath and West Show Ground at Shepton Mallet. Most people stay in a tent, Jo and I stayed at the Inn at the top of the hill. It is about 15 minutes walk to the centre of the show ground from there, which is about the same as some of the camp sites. There are hot drinks and other refreshments available in lots of places and a food court in the centre of the 'village'. This was our second visit to New Wine.

If you have never been the pattern of the day is breakfast, worship, seminars, lunch, seminars, evening meal, and worship. There are early morning and late evening activities too. The morning and evening worship sessions follow the same basic layout. There is up to an hour of singing followed by a talk of about 40 minutes, followed by ministry (people going forward for prayer).

Everything on offer is optional, we chose to attend morning and evening worship in the main venue each day and just a few seminars. There is an 'exhibition' in one of the large halls where you can get involved in all sorts of things, with many organisations offering all sorts of opportunities. There is also a bookshop. I had decided that I would do less seminars this time, two years ago I was overloaded with them and was not able to make use of all I had heard. This time I bought two books and decided to read as much of them as possible in the gaps between seminars. More on those another time – probably.

Here are just a few of the highs and lows from the week. These are my views and experiences, others will disagree. First the lows. I normally expect the sung worship at such events to be amazing, sadly this time it was not. On some occasions there were just too many songs that I didn't know. I learn songs more slowly than most so I found this frustrating. One exception to this was Rend Collective (look them up on the internet) who put on an amazing show one evening and still managed to lead us all in worship. Another low was the availability of Wi-Fi. Not an issue for some, but increasingly a problem in the modern world when it is unavailable. Wi-Fi access is limited to one hour, so taking and storing notes on my Samsung pad was difficult. I had to go back to paper and pen, and I still have lots of notes to process.

So that's the bad news out of the way, on to some of the good things. The Archbishop of Canterbury paid us a visit. He answered questions in a seminar and spoke and involved himself in the ministry one evening. The 'tent' was packed, its usual 6,000 capacity exceeded and it was very hot and humid, but well worth staying for. He comes across as a normal Christian, not a slightly out of touch academic, but even so it is easy to see that he is a very thoughtful and prayerful man. Among other things he spoke about his priorities for the church, which I have condensed into three short points:

1. Prayer and revival
2. Reconciliation
3. New disciples

I attended a very interesting seminar (called “Faking Life”) on the issues that bio-technology is raising for Christian ethics. Sounds boring? Well try this: “If there was a drug that could increase your intelligence would you take it?” That was the opening question we were given to 'wake us up'. Of course, such a drug already exists, but more effective ones will be here soon.

Robbie Dawkins on Wednesday evening did 'healing by example'. He prays for the first person, they pray for the next person, using the words he gives them and so on, and it seemed to work, if to a rather limited extent. He said he has less success healing Christians than he does non-believers. That prompts some interesting questions to mull over in the next few weeks. There were lots of healing testimonies at every worship session in the main venue. I would like to hear from those people again in six months time to see how they're doing.

Then there was Steve Morris. “If your speaker can't get here ask the youth worker to have a go.” seems to be the attitude among a number of leaders, sometimes it fails, this was not one of those times. His young people had told him not to water it down – and he didn't. He talked about living with integrity and at one point by way of an example said that if everyone in the tent gave the price of a burger (£6 from the posh burger stall) then their project to build an education centre in South Africa would be paid for. There was no appeal, and it wasn't even a main point of his talk. Shortly after he said this I noticed more people moving around than was usual, then there were lots of people moving up to the stage. They were putting money on the stage. The leaders sent for buckets, but they were not enough, the people making donations were having to be directed. In total £34,000 was raised in about 10 minutes. We found out the next day that a prophecy given in the USA had predicted that the money would be given and it would look like it came from a watering can – a very apt description. This was an undoubted move of the Holy Spirit, especially because it took the leaders by surprise and they were slightly embarrassed by what happened. A real miracle and my high light of the week by a long way.

The main thing I like about New Wine is that the day starts and ends with worshipping and there are times when the Holy Spirit is moving – things happen! There is a lot more to think and pray about, and much of it will change us in ways we can't foresee.