It was great to hold another successful Catalyst Festival at Stoneleigh Park, where around 4000 people came together to worship and hear from God, be together as a community and be commissioned to go into our towns and neighbourhoods and the world. It’s been great to hear encouraging feedback from people both on site and afterwards and to see the effect the Festival has had on our churches as we’ve returned.

One of the many highlights was the amazing sense of the presence of God bringing healing and words of knowledge in the main sessions. We were led so well by our two bands, there was an amazing sense of the presence of God, and it was so good to see healing and words of knowledge being brought throughout. However, this wasn’t just in the main meetings and it was great to hear stories of healings happening in kids’ work around the Festival as well. There was also a number of prophetic words brought about favour upon Catalyst for fresh apostolic breakthrough in many nations, and I am looking forward to seeing how that progresses!

We had a fantastic range of speakers at this Festival, and it was particularly great to have Terry Virgo and Andy McCullough with us. I must also thank Andrew Wilson for stepping in so brilliantly at the last minute to speak to us on how to live the kingdom in ‘ordinary’ life. Within the Catalyst network it was good to welcome Julian Adams as well as have Martyn Dunsford speaking.

However, the Festival was about so much more than just the main sessions and there was a great celebration of creativity in all sorts of things around the event. It was a moving experience to be around the zones and see the variety that was on offer, as part of building the kingdom.

The arts was also a prominent feature of the Festival, and I very much enjoyed looking around the Sputnik exhibition, as well as hearing some of the artists that were performing.

Overall, the Catalyst Festival is an amazing time of celebrating God’s rule in the whole of life, as is a great display of what we do together as a family of churches. As part of this, it was great to raise £187,408 for the work of international mission, as well as see people commit to working for God’s kingdom not only in their communities and cities, but around the world. Bring on next year’s Festival!