For the Lord... and music

Pray for this year’s Å-Festival, Denmark’s largest Christian music and praise gathering, planned for May 22 through 25. Organizers expect more then 3,000 young people for three days of concerts and praise gatherings, seminars and special speakers, prayer times, and even a volleyball tournament.

Most festival attendees will stay in camping trailers spread out on a large field near Sønder (South) Felding, a rural village in central Jylland. Large tents are set up for the main gatherings. 

Rend Collective, a popular praise band from Northern Ireland, is billed as one of the music headliners.

“Å-festival is a completely different way to meet with other Christians, compared to Bible camp,” said Kåre Dyer Pedersen. “Here we’re coming together around music and around Jesus, and around the fact that our love of music can also be reflected in our faith in Christ. Here, there’s room to just be, and we’ll put together the coolest music program for you.”

The annual festival started in 1991 as a way to engage with teens, especially those newly confirmed in the church. It’s obviously grown since then!

PRAY for many believers (and perhaps also seekers!) to attend this year’s festival.

PRAY for the speakers and performers, that they would know God’s heart for Danish young people.

PRAY that young lives would be changed and faith deepened in genuine, lasting ways.

Looking for a quiet revival

In England and Wales, they’re calling an unprecedented rise in church attendance “The Quiet Revival.” (https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival) Attendance among 18- to 24-year-olds has quadrupled since 2018, and overall attendance among all age groups is up 50 percent. Norway, Sweden, and Finland are seeing similar movements.

But what about Denmark?

After a nationwide survey, the Danish TV2 reported that “there is a growing interest among young people in the Christian faith. This applies to your people who come to church events or approach pastors for a personal conversation or with questions about the Bible. But most of all, pastors are saying that more young people are showing up for traditional Sunday services.”

For their report, TV2 spoke with a “long line” of young people with no Christian background, who have in recent years become believers. 

Nicolai Røge, a pastor in Odense, is seeing a clear trend. In the TV2 report he said that many more young people are showing up every Sunday. People like 19-year-old Romeo Troelsgaard.

Only a couple years ago, Romeo would have called himself an atheist. “I saw religion as nonsense,” he said, “a good story, a fairy tale or a fable that some crazy people still believed for some reason.”

But then he visited his local church as part of a research project for school. He came away changed. Today he’s reading the scriptures, listening to online preaching, and going to Sunday services. A reporter asked Romeo if he was afraid of missing anything from his old life.

“No,” he replied. “Because what you miss out on worldly things, you get back through the meaning it gives to be in church, or watching videos about the Bible. It’s so much more rewarding.”

PRAY for revival among young college-age students in Denmark.

PRAY that Danish pastors would seize this opportunity to reach out to more young people.

PRAY for Romeo Troelsgaard and others like him, that God would open their eyes and draw them to himself.

Photo: Ansgars Kirke Odense