Fantastic First Fort Rocky
The theme for Fort Rocky this year is ‘Illuminate’, focusing on John 8:12: ‘Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”’ Andy Hancock, Residentials Coordinator, explains: ‘Throughout the weekend we looked at various aspects of light and what Jesus meant by describing himself as the light of the world.’
But how did the weekend go? Did the new ideas work? ‘The team were a little nervous,’ Andy admits. ‘But our worries were soon dispelled. As soon as the doors opened for the first session and the young people came rushing in, I knew it was going to be a brilliant weekend!’
The heart of a Fort Rocky weekend is the Saturday night gospel presentation. During this weekend, tying in with the ‘Illuminate’ theme, the Saturday night speaker invited the young people to follow Jesus and have the light of life. Many of the young people responded to this invitation, staying behind to pray with their youth leaders and the team were delighted with the response.
Another highlight for the team was on Sunday morning. Andy tells us more: ‘This year we are trying to engage all sorts of different learning styles through video and creative activities. For example, I asked the team to create their ‘cardboard testimonies’, which are simply a sentence on either side of some cardboard, to show where God has taken you from and where he has brought you to. As the team revealed what God had done in their lives you could see that the young people were really moved by their testimonies.’
All in all, the first Fort Rocky of the new season was a resounding success, and has created a real sense of excitement amongst the team as to what the rest of the season holds. This excitement is all the greater because of an encouragement from God which the team received during the first weekend. The encouragement came from Isaiah 43:19: ‘See, I am doing a new thing.’ We can only imagine what sort of new thing God might do through Fort Rocky this year!
