7 January 2021 | St Albans, UK [Paul Lockham]
‘Vision’ Music Contest, organised by the Trans-European Division’s Youth Ministries department, provided an opportunity for youth around the Division to start the New Year in an atmosphere of joy, celebration, togetherness, and hope.
The programme was broadcast live on New Year’s Eve on both the TED YouTube channel and Youth Ministries Facebook page.
The programme started with a lively rendition of ‘Mary, did you know?’ by ACT-J from Scotland, one of the fifteen countries that participated in the contest.
Despite a slight glitch with the YouTube channel at the start of the broadcast, the audience rapidly grew to over 400 across the two platforms. Although the audience was expected to mainly come from the participating countries, there were visitors from Brazil, Mexico, Germany, and Chile to name but a few.
The host for the evening – Pastor Dejan Stojković, British Union Conference Youth Ministries director – introduced each of the songs and entertained the audience throughout the programme sharing a few facts about each of the countries.
The audience were also reminded on how to vote for their favourite songs using the live.voxvote.com platform and chats on both platforms enabled participants to post New Year’s greetings, give thanks for the songs presented, encourage others to vote for a particular favourite, and cheer the submissions.
The fifteen entries were varied and three of them had been written specifically for the contest: ‘You lift me up’ by Leo Lammi from Finland, ‘Here in Norway’ by Natanya Lundstom from Norway, ‘I surrender all’ by Leandra van Ommeren from the Netherlands. It was evident from comments in the chat that these three songs appealed to the audience in a special way. However, other entries were very much appreciated as evidenced by the following comment from one of the chats, “Every song and country has its own charm.” Just looking at the list of entries and listening to the music from these different countries* makes it clear that the youth of the Division are “talenTED”!
The official “jury results” were declared country by country, which when tallied, placed Finland as the winner, followed by Norway and England.
The climax in the programme came when the audience were given their last opportunity to vote while a short clip from each country was played, followed by a “spoken word” rendition by Scottish Andrew Ace Bamusi, after which the host was able to give the results of the audience vote with similar results to the jury’s vote with the first three songs being from Finland, Norway, and Serbia.
Comments in the chat towards the end of the evening summed up how the majority felt about the New Year’s Eve Music Party: “What a nice way to spend the last hours of the year 2020”, “It was wonderful to hear the love of God shared in so many languages”, “Thank you so much, everyone, hope we do this again next year”, “Great to hear such diverse music and talent from across Europe! Also, wonderful to spend this time with all of you!!”
The programme was brought to a close with a New Year blessing given by the Youth Ministries directors from around the Division.
“One of our goals for the event was to promote the international, multi-cultural appreciation and feeling that we are together in these strange times and to bring joy and hope both to those participating and those watching,” explained Zlatko Musija, TED Youth Ministries director. “Having in mind these purposes, I think that the event was quite successful. I believe it united the youth department leaders from all across our Division and brought some joy and positive outlook in these challenging times,” Musija concluded.
At the time of writing, the programme had about 5,000 views and is still available on YouTube. If you haven’t had the opportunity to watch the programme, you can watch it below and see just how talented youth across the Division are.
https://youtu.be/aYqzMrAry-w
* Albania, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, England, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Scotland, Serbia, and Wales.
tedNEWS Staff: Victor Hulbert, editor; Deana Stojković, associate editor
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tedNEWS is an information bulletin issued by the communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division. Readers are free to republish or share this article with appropriate credit including an active hyperlink to the original article.
