Magnitude was a fantastic five days for the youth, team and volunteers who attended. Mungo’s had 31 youth attend for the five days, with seven others visiting for the day throughout the week. Plus a number of adults who were there as youth team, catering or serving as part of the SU Magnitude team throughout the week.
It was an awesome five days full of worship, encounters and time with the amazing St Mungo's Youth family. There are many highlights that could be shared but what particularly stood out to me was the family unity amongst our group, the eagerness of the young people to enter into God’s presence in worship and the desire to go deeper with the Lord through prayer.
This was evidenced during a time we took as a Youth Group on the final day to spend time praying together as a youth group for various situations and the prayerful hearts that our young people had whether they were praying for peers, youth leaders or members of the church who were serving at Magnitude, was extremely powerful to witness. Lots of tears were shed during this time, unashamedly!
During the main sessions, the Magnitude band were exceptional at taking us into God’s presence and there were some fantastic talks, with Amy Orr-Ewing’s seminar on Can We Trust The Bible?, a particular stand-out for many of our young people who sprinted out from the seminar to go to the bookstall and buy her book before it sold-out!
There were lots of significant spiritual encounters for our young people including this one shared by Anna: “I was in the big tent during worship when I felt I needed to say sorry and so I did and I just felt the Holy Spirit come over me. I had this picture of things burning and God told me that ‘they were gone.’ Then the speaker that morning began talking about repentance. It just felt like a massive ‘God-Incident’.”
Other highlights from our young people included the campfire worship sessions, the sport tournaments (watching Rebecca teach the boys the rules of netball a particular highlight for the leaders!) and Mungo’s youth dominating the colour fun run to raise money for charity with Cameron and Jamie jointly winning the overall race and Rachel being the fastest female!
God was moving throughout the week and it has just built on our excitement about what we are seeing happening amongst this generation of Kingdom seekers and faith-filled believers who are inspiring those across every generation. Julia, who volunteered on the prayer team for the event, explained her highlight being “Seeing so many young people encountering God and having fun together knowing that these are foundations for life.”
I might be bias as the youth worker, but I really believe that as a church, we should be totally excited by what is happening in this generation of young people. And I’d encourage you to come and see for yourself what God is up to amongst our youth group at St Mungo’s. This group are example setters in their faith and hunger for Jesus, along with their family attitude at looking out for each other, and it is an absolute privilege to play even the tiniest part in this journey. Suzie summed it up well saying: “It was such a privilege and encouragement to be part of their journey of faith and see how they love and care for one another.”
I want to reiterate a huge thank you to all who helped make this happen. To Suzie Erasmuson and her wonderful team of volunteers who fed us superbly throughout the week. To all those from Mungo's who served as part of the SU Magnitude team whether that be on the prayer team, site team or media – we are so appreciative of the time and effort you put aside for this. To those who helped with set-up and set-down and Jonathan and 21CC for their wonderful generosity in camp equipment. To our wonderful youth team who selflessly gave up time to sleep in a field and do life with our youth. And to our wonderful young people who just example family and faith so well. It's such a privilege to be part of this movement and is something that I know our whole team never take for granted!
To finish, I want to remind you or teach you the really helpful tagline for Magnitude this week which was:
"I am who I am because the I AM tells me who I am"
Keep reminding yourself of those facts! Jonny Slatter