Greenbelt 08

I am not a christian 'event' person. In fact I have never ever gone to greenbelt or any of the other mega christian events. They always scared me as being to intense, too herd mentality. Too evangelical. I find my place with non believers not Christians who want to tell me I am wrong.
anyway i went this year with the youth group from church. I am 50 so it was more that they took me. Also I was part of the worship team leading a couple of services as part of Moot.
the event is very well organised, it had so many volunteers and general help it was easy to relax into the event. We pitched our tents and were some mile away from the area. For those of you that were there we were behind the big red bus. It was fun. The pressure to conform was just not there. I looked and found people smoking, drinking and generally looking normal.
I discovered the pub ( the Jesus Arms) and decided that this should be my base. It was a great venue to people watch and the beer was very good.
They had 3 beers confession, absolution and redemption.The on site food was good and generally everything was good value. I booked showers for everyone, long queue but i had been told get there early or forget it.
On Saturday evening Moot did its first service, it was about the cycle of the day as a metaphor for our cyclical relationship with God. It was very intense and personal. I gave a true testimony of my life and how my relationship with God made sense of it. To criticize it I would say too wordy, too performance and a bit too negative. I think we tarried too long in life is shit!
anyway a lot of people came and from the conversations afterwards thankfully God had spoken to them regardless of our efforts. Then came the family service on Sunday morning. likewise backed and layered service. It had something for people not that connected, something for those wanting'meat' and a lot for kids to do that was relevant and helpful.It was based on trinity and twister, frankly you had to be there to see about 40 young people playing twister all at once. It was fun and we worshipped God. We then had communion for all age. Most people took and I hope it showed both a sense of humour and something relevant.
I then took the youth group to the pub ( no under age drinking, very good soft drinks available)and we did the pub quiz. we won the pub quiz, which was a shock to us and we were having fun and being rather too competitive!
there were lots of other things and I will chat about them another time, but I was surprised at how easy it was to be yourself at Greenbelt and not to have to fit in or conform.