“Your shiny lights are going to change our city.” This sign greeted us as we pulled up to the skate park in downtown Málaga. Spanish participants from last year's SHINE event in Nuremburg, Germany warmly greeted our group of leaders who were scouting the large recreational area as a potential outreach site for next year’s SHINE Málaga.
“We are building momentum, beginning with leaders, vision, and prayer, for the SHINE movement to take the city of Málaga by storm next summer,” said Ed McKell, “The SHINE Málaga Leadership Forum (May 2015) unified and focused leaders and gave them a vision of the larger movement of SHINE across Europe.” The Forum gathered nearly 50 participants from 11 countries for three days of training, dreaming, and praying in preparation for next year’s SHINE youth event in Málaga.
The local team in Málaga got leaders' attention with their exciting presentation that shared interesting and unusual facts about the Málaga area and started everyone thinking about how to reach the youth in that region. From, "Do you know Malaga features 10 different kinds of coffee?" to “What is SHINE?” - everyone was excited to know the answers to their questions.
SHINE can already look back on some great events in the past few years: from the youth conference during Heartbeat Tallinn (Estonia) that drew overflow crowds to the SHINE at School movement in Switzerland and including a growing multi-city discipleship movement in Greece. The Leaders' Forum gave everyone a chance to hear about and pray for the movements that are training and empowering young people in every country represented. Presentations on File Zero, The4Points, Living and Telling and several other tools equipped and encouraged leaders for ongoing youth work in culturally relevant ways.
“God is raising up bold and shiny youth in Europe, and great youth leaders too. I’m just thankful to be part of this encouraging movement!” added Swiss youth ministry leader Mike Zurbrügg.
View SHINE Europe blog here.
A Fun and Challenging Partnership
Jesus at the center!
One Awesome Week in Málaga with Youth from Across Europe
Swiss Youth Celebrate Jesus
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