THREE DAYS OF SUN KISSED FESTIVAL FUN
We have exciting news! In 2025, Big Church Festival is set to get bigger, and after 15 years of meeting in May, it will be moving to the August Bank Holiday weekend. We’re super excited and have some big changes ahead, including adding an extra day to make a full 3 days of festival fun.
Why has Big Church moved to the summer?
Those who have regularly been to Big Church will know that a huge part of what we love to do is to create a programme full of as much of the best Christian Music that the world has to offer.
Now, it will come as no surprise that a large amount of the artists and music many of us listen to comes from our friends in the US. Over the last few years the KLOVE Fan awards, run by K-Love, the largest network of Christian Radio in the US, has grown year on year to become today, what is the leading awards event for Christian Music in America. Not only do the awards have a huge line up of Christian artists each year, many other artists are also there presenting the awards or performing at the occasion, and others will just make it a priority to be there in the audience on the night. But here’s the twist, the awards always coincide with the exact same weekend as Big Church every year.
This has made it increasingly difficult to be able to secure the availability of US Christian artists at Big Church, to the point where it has become clear and obvious that for Big Church to continue to be able to invite an international lineup of artists, we have to move our dates.
The August Bank Holiday presents the best opportunity because it is after the US summer festivals which happen in June and July, and it’s before the time when most Christian artists start their Autumn and Winter tours. It also works best with our partnership with the Wiston Estate which is very much our ’spiritual’ home.
What are the advantages of Big Church being in the summer?
Part of our vision for Big Church is that it can increasingly become a place of pilgrimage for many thousands more across the UK. Having been on the May Bank Holiday weekend and half term week has been great, but also really restrictive to many who would like to make the trip south each year. It also increasingly conflicts with school and university exams and is therefore just too inaccessible to many.
We hope that by moving to August, far more will be able to join. It also gives us the space to extend to 3 full days and, brand new for 2025, we are adding in 3 mornings of Kids and Youth programmes. Also, we hope the nights should be warmer for camping, and it is perhaps easier for some church groups to attend who have less of a programme over the summer months. Church groups will even be able to rent a marquee from us to run their own adult programme in the mornings whilst Big Church takes care of your children and young people.
What about other Christian events that are also on the same weekend?
Big Church has a good relationship with all the other national Christian events, so much so that the leaders of most of the events meet from time to time to pray together and cheer each other on.
However, we are very aware of the other Christian events that either take place on the same August Bank Holiday weekend or in the weeks surrounding this date. We have for some time been as open and honest about the challenges we have faced if we were to stay in May each year, and the other events have been both incredibly understanding and supportive, particularly around the fact that the August Bank Holiday weekend was our only possible option moving forward.
We are extremely grateful to the kindness of those who lead the other events when it has come to a clash of dates. We also don’t want to make things difficult for them or for those that attend both Big Church and other events in the summer months.
If Big Church is making changes why doesn’t it also move to a more central location?
There is a long and incredible ‘God’ story of why Big Church began and has remained on the Wiston Estate which, if we ever write a book on Big Church, will consume a whole chapter. Not least it includes prophetic words over the land, the generational prayers of a family, and several God appointments that led us to make Wiston our home. Suffice it to say, this has always been about far more than just the commercial hire of a venue, and for now we feel that this is where Big Church should remain.
In addition, we have now invested hundreds of thousands of pounds over 15 years to help develop some of the infrastructure that makes the event possible each year, and to just simply up and move to a new site would create more challenges than benefits.
However, Big Church will never close the door if a change of site, or the addition of a new site was an option, but until someone with the vision to fund that kind of move steps forward, we will remain as one site at Wiston.
We recognise that being so far South creates challenges for many and hope that a move to the summer, when children and students are off school, will make Big Church a far more accessible option for many more from all across the country.
If you have any questions, please email: [email protected]