Dan joins rock festival Chaplaincy team 

Dan Holland spent Friday 10 June at the Download Rock Festival as part of a 16 strong chaplaincy team.  Almost 100,000 metal-head fans were expected at the festival involving many big bands at Donnington Park near Derby. Dan reported that there was a lot of dark stuff including witchcraft evident but this was exactly the environment Jesus would be in; 'I will build my church [...]'.  many people were ministered during the event.

The team was led by Rev Roy Monks from Castle Donnington Community Church.


Dan writes ‘With a week to go God opened a door for me to go and do some chaplaincy and evangelism at Download festival.  As only God can He orchestrated the whole thing. My friend Pat texted to ask me to pray for the chaplaincy team which I was happy to do, as an afterthought I asked, ‘I don’t suppose I could come for a day?’ A few days before this she had given her pastor Roy (chaplaincy leader) a copy of my book ‘Prophetic Evangelism’ unbeknownst to me. Pat said ‘leave it with me’ and phoned Roy. He delightedly accepted, having read a good part of the book, and off we went! I hadn’t done any of the training and preparation the rest of the team had but God opened the way.
 
The festival was quite the eyeopener, 100,000 thousand metalheads having the time of their life. Tim and the staff prayed for me before I went and he felt I was to be a light there. When I arrived our tent poster read ‘Jesus Light of the world’. The team gelled very well, I got on with Roy like a house on fire, and we chatted and prayed for many people as we went out in pairs. Mostly people asked us for directions, many exchanged a cheery hello, but some came into the tent for a proper chat and prayer.
 
The door is wide open for future chaplaincy, actually the ministry at Download is very young and still developing. I’m very interested in seeing how evangelism can work well at such festivals. They are exactly the kind of places where Jesus would be found! Watch this space….’