Last week, I attended Contagious, a Christian youth camp, which I’ve been going on since I was 14 and I’m now a leader on. The theme this year was Spiritual Warfare. It’s one of those subjects that’s often happy hunting ground for weirdos: a subject much loved by eccentric televangelists and paranoid fruitcakes. So it was really good to look in depth at what the Bible has to say about the spiritual battle that we all face, whether we’re aware of it or not. I hope to blog on some of the main topics covered soon.

It wasn’t all Bible study and preaching though. One of the main ways in which I contributed to the conference was putting on a stage play of John Bunyan’s book The Holy War. Like his better-known The Pilgrim’s Progress, it’s an allegory for certain Christian truths, as well as a very entertaining story. It tells of how the city of Mansoul falls into the hands of the evil Diabolus, and how King Shaddai makes war to liberate it from its bondage.

I adapted it into a 45 minute script, based on the children’s version called The Story of Mansoul, an adaptation by Peter Woodcock, one of the Contagious leaders, and from Thelma Jenkins’ modern English version. It was performed by Taskforce, with the part of Diabolus played by myself.

It’s the first stage production I’ve written and had produced, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the final result. Everyone put lots of work into it, not only Taskforce but others including Olivia Murray who co-produced and directed it with me, Carrie Evans who helped organise props and costumes, and Joel Evans and Richard Gaul who did the sound and lighting. Thanks to everyone’s hard work, it was far better than I thought would be possible in the time available, and really went down well with the audience.

But my hope and prayer is that it wasn’t just entertaining, but also helped point to the miserableness of Satan and his lies, and the beauty of King Jesus and his victory. If you’re interested in getting a copy of the script to use in any way, please contact me via the email address on my profile.

Contagious is also a wonderful opportunity to meet Christian friends old and new. As well as meeting lots of good friends from previous years who mean a lot to me and have had a lot of input into my development as a Christian and as a person, I also enjoyed getting to know new punters, particularly from my SUS group (“Scripture Under Scrutiny”, small Bible study group), and new leaders. The chats, conversations, and discussions throughout the week frequently amounted to more than just friendship, and were really good fellowship.

I can’t mention everyone, but one particularly memorable character is Jason Ramasami, who is, among other things, an illustrator and cartoonist, who brought a lot of personality and creativity to the seminars and workshops that he led, and to the conference generally. He organised a 30 Second Film Festival, and has set up a blog, Punters’ Progress, to showcase these videos and also other stuff relating to this year’s Contagious.

The teaching was excellent: detailed, Biblical, hard-hitting, practical and encouraging. MP3s of the talks are usually available on the Contagious website following the conference, so stay tuned for those!