History - Soul Survivor

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin…

1993

Soul Survivor started in 1993 when Mike Pilavachi was a youth worker at St Andrew’s Chorleywood under the leadership of Bishop David Pytches who began the New Wine conferences. As the youth work grew at New Wine, Mike became keen to start a new event for teenagers and so Soul Survivor was born! The first ever Soul Survivor conference hosted 1,896 young people in sunny Shepton Mallet!

1994

Body Builders was launched. This wasn’t a fitness VHS from Mike, it was a training course to equip young leaders. Soul Survivor has been involved in raising up young leaders ever since, now primarily through Soul61.

1997

Two summer conferences held back to back for the first time.

1998

A stream of seminars were set up for youth leaders. This was the start of SoulNet, the part of Soul Survivor specifically here to love and support youth leaders.

1999

As numbers grew, a third week was added to the summer conferences in Somerset.

2000

12,000 young people took to the streets of Manchester for two weeks to serve the local communities as part of Soul Survivor The Message 2000.

2002

Passion For Your Name worship conference started. This went on to become Worship Central. The Big Top made its debut!

2004

SOULINTHECITY took place in London, where more than 20,000 gathered to serve different communities. The two weeks culminated with a prayer and worship event in Trafalgar Square.

2005

Momentum was birthed to help meet the needs of Christians in their 20s and 30s. Soul Action, a joint initiative between Soul Survivor and Tearfund, was also launched. It is the bit of Soul Survivor that exists to help us all do something about issues of injustice and poverty.

2007

To make it easier for friends in the north of the UK, a week of Soul Survivor was hosted in Cheshire. Soul Survivor A now calls the Staffordshire Showground home.

2009

Up for another adventure, we took 350 young people to Durban, South Africa, to serve churches and projects working with the vulnerable and marginalized.

2010

Naturally Supernatural was set up to help encourage the whole Church to move in the power of the Holy Spirit in their everyday lives. Fancy dress on the final day of the Soul Survivor summer events was introduced.

2011

A one-day conference called Equal ran for the first time looking at the theology of women in leadership, aiming to teach and encourage female leaders. The first Momentum Weekend took place at Center Parcs.

2014

In 2014 we had our first ever Soul Survivor Scotland and we loved it so much we’ve made it an annual event! The first Soul Survivor Scotland was held at the Thainstone Centre in Aberdeen but we now make our home for five days at the brilliant Scripture Union Lendrick Muir venue in Kinross.

2016

After many summers in the fields of Somerset, we said a last goodbye to the Bath & Showground in August 2016. Our new home at the East of England showground provides a more central location and has great transport links making it easier to access for many, as well as having a purpose built arena and some fantastic facilities. It’s a whole new chapter for us as for so many years Soul Survivor was synonymous with Shepton Mallet!

2017

In 2017 we launched our first Naturally Supernatural summer event for all ages and life stages as we’re passionate about equipping the whole church to lead Spirit-led lives. We also spent out first summer at the Peterborough Showground for Weeks B and C. Week B was completely sold out as so many people wanted to come and worship together!

2018

In 2018 around 20,000 young people came to our four Soul Survivor events, and almost 5,000 came to Naturally Supernatural. In May we announced that 2019 will be our final summer of conferences and you can find out more about what led us to that decision here. We’re excited about the summer of 2019 and all that God has in store as we come together to worship and celebrate his goodness.

God has taken us on an amazing journey and we can’t wait to see what more he wants to do in the summer of 2019! We also recognise we couldn’t do what we do without amazing, supportive friends like you! We’d hugely appreciate your prayers for everyone coming this summer and for the team as we prepare; we’d love to have you on our summer team to help make our events run smoothly, and if you’re able to support us financially that would be amazing. Thanks for journeying with us and we hope to see you at one of our events really soon!