Final preparations are in place for this year’s New Wine summer festivals, which will see over 30,000 people meeting together to worship God.The events will be taking place at the Royal Bath and West Showground, Shepton Mallet, and the Newark and Nottinghamshire County Showground in Newark, from Saturday 21 July to Saturday 4 August.

The theme of this year’s festival is UNLEASHED and will include main talks from, amongst others, Francis Chan, Shane Claiborne, Mike Pilavachi, J John and Danielle Strickland. Along with the morning and evening meetings, delegates are being offered over 320 seminars to choose from throughout the week, presented by a variety of speakers on a variety of subjects.

Founded in 1989 by a team from St Andrews Church, Chorleywood, and led by David Pytches and Barry Kissell, the first New Wine Christian Family Conference was held at the Royal Bath and Wells Showground, Somerset, and attracted nearly 2,500 people. It was the desire of the team from St Andrews that the spontaneous expansion of the church being witnessed in South America could be replicated in the UK; empowered by ‘ordinary Christians’ ministering in the Gifts of the Spirit, as demonstrated in scripture. David Pytches was also greatly inspired at this time by the Vineyard Church leader, John Wimber (1934-1997).

In 1993, under the leadership of Mike Pilavachi, then a youth worker at St Andrews Church, a separate festival was established for teenagers, and was called Soul Survivor. Today, over 30,000 people attend the New Wine festival, and over 28,000 young Christians attend the Soul Survivor festival.

When it was initial established, the name New Wine described a charismatic theology which encouraged people to live a new life enabled by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Today, the theology remains the same, and the organisation, which is known to be the one of the largest networks of charismatic churches in the UK, carries the motto: “Local Churches Changing Nations”