Summer 
Madness
(Photos taken from
Offical Summer Madness Web Page)
Summer Madness was and
still is the largest Christian music festival in Ireland. It
gives you an opportunity, at the beginning of the summer to get
out and have a great larf whilst enjoying Christian fellowship.
This year the festival
was brilliant, with thousands of young people, it was hard not to
make new friends! There is so much to do at Summer Madness that
you are never at a loss for something to do.
During the afternoon
various activities were arranged including banana boating,
canoeing, T-shirt printing, sign language workshop and our very
own 5-a-side Summer Madness World Cup tournament. Around the
village there were various tents such as 'concern' 'CMS
Ireland' and the Soul Food Cafe which offered their
own programmes. There was also catering tents where you could
enjoy a not too expensive . .umm. . what should we call it . .
meal!
No, seriously there was a
really good selection of food available. In the evening Summer
Madness really comes alive. After a usually fantastic worship
session most people headed to 're:activate' to listen to bands
such as Halcyon Days and I am sure the most famous one, with the
lads anyway had to have been 'Tomorrow Girl'
The worship sessions took
place in the big top (think circus tent!!) every morning and
evening and were absolutely amazing. The energy and joy which was
evident during these sessions made the worship a pleasurable
activity for both God and us because we came back to the heart of
worship remembering that it is really all about Jesus. It was
really refreshing to praise God with so many people and the unity
we felt was made especially clear during the Communion service on
Sunday morning.
It was an incredible
experience to share this experience in coming closer to God with
such a large number of people. At times God was really felt among
us really encouraging us to go out into the world sharing his
love which is what we want to do by inviting you to come next
year to experience the fun, the frolics, the closeness to God,
the dodgy loos, the music, the laughs, the mud . . . the Madness
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