The Higher Gig

Fifteen youth leaders accompanied 232 pupils on three coaches from Mold to the Higher Gig at Venue Cymru, Llandudno!  The leaders represented King's Christian Centre, Ebenezer Baptist Church and Bethesda Chapel.  A local Primary Teacher also came along to help as a thank you for  many years of Open the Book assemblies. The coaches were funded with grants and donations from the Welsh Presbyterian Church which meant the journey was free for the young people.  Financial contributions toward the costs of the Higher Tour were raised by all our partner churches through coffee morning collections, member donations and church gifts.  

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 
Ephesians 4:3-4

Author

Phoebe Boden is a Second Year Student at Glyndwr University, reading Youth and Community Work.

"After attending one of the Higher school sessions, I was excited to see the impact that this event was going to have on the town of Mold. I was excited to see how it would affect the young people in North Wales. I was pumped and ready to see hundreds of young people give their lives to Jesus and change the culture for a whole town. Everyone was ready and excited for the gig, whether it was just to get away from their parents for a few hours, or it was because they loved live music. Whatever their reason for going, we were just happy that so many of them wanted to be there.
You could feel the buzz as we waited for the coaches. There were so many young people that we didn’t know, and had never seen before, which was incredible, and is a real credit to the visiting bands and the power of the school visits that Higher provides. When we got on the coaches, that buzz only got more and more."

"​Arriving at the venue was so exciting. Seeing how many young people had actually turned up from all over North Wales was crazy, and the feeling that something incredible was about to happen was overwhelming. Young people from all over this part of the country had worn their nicest clothes, been as creative as possible with their make up and had done their hair as well as they could. You can always tell how excited a young person is about an event, by how extravagant their eyeshadow is, and the eyeshadow was off the scale.
Once the gig got started, young people were flowing in and out of the main venue, usually coming back for the bands that had visited their schools. To look at it from the outside, it probably looked like there was a lot of young people not paying attention, with around half of them not even listening to the bands. This could be seen as quite disheartening, however, half of 1200 is still 600, which means that 600 young people who had probably never heard about Jesus before were focused on him and only him for 3 straight hours. A lot of those young people responded in some way when given the option. We will never know whether that was because they got caught up in the music, or because it was something that they actually felt in their heart was right, but they responded nonetheless.
Leaving that venue left a real glow in my heart. Not only because of the gospel sharing that we had just witnessed, but because it was so clear that there are a huge number of people willing to do so much in order for these young people to hear about Jesus. The number of young leaders, ministers, pastors, volunteers that are dedicating their lives and putting in so much effort and work to see these young people come to know Jesus was incredible. I am honoured to be a part of work that is so much bigger than just one school, bigger than one church, so much bigger than just one town.
After the Higher tour came the follow on sessions. The prepared material was good quality stuff, that has the potential to have a huge impact. So when no young people attended, it was disappointing. Did this mean that the whole event had failed? Did this mean that we had all wasted our time?
1200 young people heard about Jesus that night. Some of them for the first time. We may never know the impact that that had on them, we may never see the effect. But for them, they may have taken the first step on a journey that they didn’t even know that they were on. God worked in that venue in so many different ways, some that we may not recognise. But knowing that 1200 young people heard that they are loved by the god that created the whole universe and them is good enough for me. "