24 March 2014 | St Albans, United Kingdom [Paul Tompkins, Kirsten Oster-Lundqvist and Steve Thomas] The Trans-European Division (TED) hosted two of the 22 worldwide live transmissions as part of Global Youth Day (GYD) on Saturday, 15th March 2014 from Vik, near Oslo and Newbold College, England. These transmissions were hosted by young people at both venues and went on air at 5pm local time which allowed the Oslo transmission to pass the ball directly to Newbold.
In 2013, Global Youth Day was the result of an inspiration Gilbert Cangy, General Conference Youth Director, had while travelling home from an overseas youth event. He wanted to get the 8 million Adventist young people throughout the world active; get them out of their usual routines of just listening to sermons and onto the streets doing acts of kindness and service in their local communities and to practically “Be the Sermon”.
Three transmissions were held through the Hope Channel in 2013 but 2014’s vision was to transmit live throughout the 24 hours and mark the incredible impact this event has had on the world church.
In our TED territory, church groups from the very north in Alta, Norway linked through to the Oslo transmission, while cities in Croatia and Albania in the south featured as part of the Newbold broadcast. Other participating countries featured included Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden. Greece and Serbia also took part in the day with activities, but were not directly involved in the live broadcast.
The individual projects were wide and varied. In the Netherlands, they used a nationally known saying “carrying the egg “as a means of people sharing their stresses and writing something appropriate on a real egg. In many other cities across Europe, waffles and fruit with Bible texts and other literature were distributed; some youth involved themselves in making the community a better place by picking up litter. Other acts of kindness included visiting a children’s home for children with disabilities, giving blood, exchanging cigarettes for pieces of fruit, singing at old people’s homes, feeding the homeless, praying for people and giving away free hugs to name but a few.
In the UK a group of young people helped open canal locks for people in boats. Other groups helped to clean up their communities and neighbouring beaches, donated clothes to the British Heart Foundation as well as giving gift bags to residents in old people’s homes. An iconic red Routemaster bus was transformed and parked in the busy Oxford Street in London offering free health and dental checks as well as prayers.
Globally the effects of GYD have been very impressive. One member of the public in London commented, “You are just great. God bless you all”. The youth that volunteered also gave positive feedback, “It’s a different way to reach out in ministry – perfect, actually, and it needs to continue”. All across the countries young people took part in the day’s events and reports of these activities are still coming in.
Participating as part of the Oslo programme, TED Youth Director, Paul Tompkins, saw the action first hand and said, “It was great to see so many young people excited and motivated to share their faith in a practical way and to participate in an event that linked youth throughout the world”. Reports have shared that 58,000 computers worldwide were logged on during the Nordic hour alone.
The impact of Global Youth Day has been huge and next year it will be repeated on Saturday, March 21st which will also mark the commencement of the international week of prayer. [tedNEWS]
tedNEWS Staff: Miroslav Pujic, director; Deana Stojkovic, editor
119 St Peter’s Street, St Albans, Herts, AL1 3EY, England
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.ted-adventist.org
tedNEWS is an information bulletin issued by the communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division.
You are free to re-print any portion of the bulletin without need for special permission. However, we kindly request that you identify tedNEWS whenever you publish these materials.
