British Pakistani Christian Association led the first ever Redbridge Christmas Festival in Ilford Town Centre on Tuesday 23rd December 2014. The event brought together churches from around London and partners included; Gateway Church, Gants Hill, Holy Nations Church, Pimlico and Kingdom Ministries Urdu Fellowship Ilford.
Despite the cold weather the event was attended by many visitors, many of whom were from a non-Christian background. People were clearly excited by the holiday period that accompanies Christmas and were struck by the gifted and spiritual singing by worship groups from supporting churches.
The event began with a secular bollywood performance by D-style dance who are led by Angelique Pervaiz a practising Christian. This was followed by secular dance performances by Latasha Sinclair a Catholic British National Champion, Lyrical and Acro Dancer.
The first gospel performance was from Diane Ofori of Holy Nation Church, Pimlico who sang a number of Christmas Carols including ‘Mary did you know.’ This was followed by a stellar performance by Zephaniah Labale also from Holy Nation Church, who rocked out a number of modern worship songs.
Gateway church had both their adult and youth choirs performing a wonderful mix of carols and worship songs and the children of Kingdom Ministries Urdu church performed a dance to ‘How great is our God’
Other activities included an art workshop with Images of Jesus birth and biblical verses and some face-painting, to help children actively learn about the true message of Christmas.
In a great show of unity the adult worship group of Gateway Church, joined with Zephaniah Labale to sing worship songs and carols for the last 40 minutes. The children of Kingdom Ministries also joined them with Latasha Sinclair to end the event in a collaborative powerful finale – a wonderful repeat performance of ‘How great is our God.’
Gateway church gave out flyers for their Christmas period services and spoke with local people sharing the good news about Jesus birth, life and death and what it means to Christians. Visitors responded well.
Our Chairman Wilson Chowdhry was approached by a visitor who described how he had fallen away from God, but was moved by the Christmas worship in the town centre. He stayed throughout the event and joined in with the songs he knew. before leaving he declared his intent to give his life back to God, which was a fulfilling moment for Wilson, he said;
“Establishing this event was a chance to build on the huge success of the Redbridge Easter Parade, which we have been coordinating for two years. Our first aim was to germinate better relations within local churches and the collaborative performance at the end illustrated great unity. Our other primary aim was to introduce the truth about Jesus to local residents, during the main festivals in the Christian Calendar. The salvation of the visitor who confirmed that he would recommit his life to God evidenced that the event had been a resounding success. By bringing church in the streets we pro-actively met people where they were, introducing or reintroducing Jesus as a living God, rather than a historical figure.”
