The Furnace

So last week I was at "Flames of Fire", the New Wine Cymru holiday week.

Holiday. Glory - I was running the Furnace, the 18-30s stream, a new thing this year, and was working from 10am till midnight every day!

Actually, it was great. Last year was hard work. We just had a late night cafe for young adults, and though the content was good - most of the evening speakers came along to chat about things that really inspired them - the venue was hard work as we shared it with a seminar thing, and had to put out chairs, and there were no comfy chairs to lounge on, we had to buy coffee etc and make it ourselves, we had to do everything - and then I had to drive home every night (Builth Wells is an hour away).

As there was just the cafe, it didn't plug into anything else, and it felt like a poorly thought-out add-on. Which it was. I went to the de-brief meeting afterwards ready to resign and walk away. But Gary from Ignite, the youth set up, started talking about combining the young adult stuff with the youth work. Using a part of their venue. Some of their team - who come into this age bracket. Including the top of the youth bracket into a new worship venue - 16-30s. And I began to get a bit of vision. Bother. I couldn't walk away - though I really wanted to.

Gary and Nigel kept encouraging me. The New Wine leadership kept encouraging me. I kept wanting to walk away. (Though I may have not said that out loud.) Nigel put a team together, and I added a couple of people. We put a programme together. I began to get excited by it.

This year - well, the week before the event, Nigel (who was overseeing everything) got ill. And two members of my church died. So my preparation was a little altered... I run a church like a family. Losing two members in one week, well, it is traumatic. I'm not claiming I feel it like Anne's sister or Phil's daughter, but as I sat on my stairs after Phil's funeral just letting myself shed a few tears, knowing I had to get back in the car and drive back to Builth for that afternoon's events at Flames - it was not the week I had envisaged.

Having said that - it was a great week. We had 70 people attend our worship meetings, with the excellent Superhero leading the music, and speakers ranging from Dai Hankey to Don Williams. There was a steady theme through all the evenings, about discovering that God loves us for who we are.

We had 56 one night in our cafe (last year our high number was 19!) - this photo is of MGQ doing a jazz worship set in the cafe. Most nights we had a sort of chat show set up, with guests being quizzed by Lois Richards and myself, plus live music either from the guests themselves - or in Bruce Collins' case, from his son Matthew. Bruce was great - prophesying to the crowd, and explaining about prophesy in the church, whilst perhaps the most profound evening was Andy Booth's instrumental worship night.

One person described coming into our worship times as being like walking into a wall of God. One person felt they had their asthma healed, and then came to me asking for prayer that they might go and pray for their friends to be healed as well. Two people felt they heard angels sing one night as we worshipped - and I can believe it.

We moved the cafe venue from one room to another midweek. It involved a lot of furniture, a PA system, a kitchen re-think - a lot of hassle. I apologetically looked at the team. "Can we do this?" They all agreed - it was the right thing to do - it was no trouble. A can-do attitude. With that kind of heart, no wonder we were in a place where we could be blessed.

Gary oversaw us, with Paul Thompson, and did a sterling job. John, Richard, Naomi, Lois, Maddie, Patrick, Geraint, plus Diana and Elen in the cafe - and Tim on the PA and Nick on visuals - all were great, as were Superhero and my own little band on the two occasions we played. Hard work. Real blessing.

On the final morning, a guy came up to me - I guess he was 18 - he'd had a couple of questions during the week - and he told me he'd had a sense of God speaking to him and hadn't known what to do with it. We talked and prayed and I challenged him a bit. It followed on from things said earlier on, and built on the respect and trust I hope he'd found I'd shown a couple of days before. It was the last thing I did before leaving the site. That he came to me to ask his question and be prayed for - I felt I had done a job well. I certainly enjoyed doing it.

Last year I would have walked away gladly. This year, if they ask me to - I'll be gutted.