Greenbelt 2008

Festival-goers flocked to the Evangelical Alliance’s stand at Greenbelt to complete the Agenda for Change cathedral by adding scores of plastic bricks graffitied with their “good news” pledges.

And playing with plastic wasn’t the only Alliance attraction – around 2,500 people turned out to hear Joel Edwards' talk on “What are evangelicals for in 2008?”

Joel answered with an Agenda for Change, telling the crowd that today’s evangelicals need to go back to their roots and act strategically to present Christ credibly as good news to society.

Joel was also a member of two Greenbelt panels, “For the Bible tells me so,” an exploration of how Christians handle the Bible, and “How do you shop for development?”, and talked about his childhood and the Alliance's vision for the future at the late-night “Last Orders” event.

He said: “I arrived on site and felt that I’d stepped into an open space, where I was free to speak unapologetically from an evangelical perspective into a truly eclectic environment, where thinking Christians feel at liberty to interrogate their faith.”