Love Leiden

Festival:Mors (EN)

Well, at long last I can announce that on June 2/3/4 2011 we will be organising a big street festival and community action event called Festival:Mors.

In collaboration with Serve the City in Leiden we plan to hold three days of cleaning up the streets, painting & decorating, helping the poor and elderly, kids activities, etc., culminating in a street festival on Saturday 4 June.  Teams from churches right across the city will be working together to serve the Mors area of Leiden.  We are also hoping to have at least one guest team from somewhere else (more details later).

The festival itself will have attractions such as a merry-go-round, stage with bands playing, stalls for local organisations, food stalls, sports competitions/coaching, teenager fun with inflatables (sumo wrestling or life-size table football), etc.

We aim to also make this the launch event for a new ongoing ministry in the Mors.  There is currently a desperate shortage of youth work in the Mors.  So one suggestion is to establish a youth group aimed at teenagers who hang around on the streets in the evening.

Why?  The church in the Mors is not really visible any more.  4 years ago the PKN Maranathakerk was demolished and, whilst there are two churches based in the area, there are currently no obvious church buildings left in the Mors.  The area itself is mixed, with some parts that are relatively affluent, yet with a central area with much deprivation.  We want to let the residents of the Mors know that the church has not forgotten them and that we want to work with them to improve the quality of life in the place where they live.  What better way to do this than to organise something fun for everyone.

This is all still in the very early stages, but we have committed to make this happen and are now starting to talk to the local authorities to make this event a reality.

Please pray for us!  We need to see the organising team grow over the next three months and we need to have enthusiastic responses from potential partnering organisations (churches, city council, police, residents associations, community centre, sponsors, etc.).

Do you have any ideas or suggestions?  Please feed them through by leaving a comment.