Soul Survivor
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Soul Survivor (frequently shortened to SS) is a worldwide Christian charity based in Watford, London. It runs worldwide Christian festivals, also called Soul Survivor, the biggest of which occurs every August in Shepton Mallet. It's origins can be traced back to St. Andrews in Chorleywood, (notably the Vicar of which was Bishop David Pytches), where the youth worker Mike Pilavachi and the worship leader Matt Redman had a vision of thousands of young people worshipping God together in their own New Wine-like conferance. Their vision became reality in 1993 when 1896 young people attended the first Soul Survivor. The 2003 attendance figure was around 21,500 in two separate conferences called SSA and SSB, not counting Passion For Your Name, another SS-run conference focussed on equipping worship leaders and refreshing worshippers. 2005 will see the first Momentum Conference between the dates of 15-19 August, which is aimed at 18-30 year olds. Soul Survivor has now branched into other countries such as Malaysia, the Netherlands, USA, Canada and Australia with the success of its father conference, New Wine, as a precedent. Often the New Wine network finds itself offering financial and spiritual support for Soul Survivor's extremely ambitious projects for the reasons that they seem to further the Kingdom of God and show God's love in a passionate way.
Soul Time/XLP is another related scheme in which university aged students can take a gap year to work for SS.
Soul Survivor also believes very strongly that the worship of God is more than just singing songs; it is about putting faith into action, "getting out onto the streets" and proclaiming social justice. In the US their slogan was "actions speak louder". So it runs outreach events like London's Soul In The City (summer 2004) and Festival: Manchester. Thousands of young people come from all over the UK and even the world to work for Jesus across multi-cultural communities on very diverse projects to help improve the quality of life for the people in each city. The next major project may be Liverpool in 2008, but the biggest SS project ever to be attempted will use the cooperation from Richard Branson and his Virgin Airlines to take thousands of delegates to Durban, South Africa.