Amid lots of Christian Festivals held during the summer, last weekend the churches in Merseyside, Liverpool joined hands to hold a campaign aimed at transforming urban environments and religious stereotypes.

It is a pilot event for Merseyfest, which will be held in August 2005. At the heart of the Christian message is the commandment of Christ to “love your neighbour as yourself.” Merseyfest is a means of putting this into practise, but doing it in such a way that it encourages mass participation and ownership.

More than 300 young people invaded dozens of city streets on Merseyside on 4th-6th August. Every morning, there was worship, teaching and training for participants. In the afternoon, they started community services. Their actions included cleaning-up graffiti drawings on public walls, picking up litter and painting walls. The three-day event had the full support of Sefton Borough Council and Merseyside Police.

“Most people see Christianity as something that is done in a building, by ‘religious’ people,” said Kler, leader of more than a dozen teams of young people, “but we would like to tell them ‘we are Christians who just want to serve the community’.”

“Sadly, young adults and a good press don’t always go together,” said the Bishop of Liverpool, Rt Rev James Jones, “but these highly-motivated young people are using their holidays in a positive way ...they’re prepared to get their hands dirty, making a difference to the lives of people around them.”

Merseyfest, which is about one year away, is much more than just one week in August. The whole process of preparing projects is all about creating and developing local partnerships. The projects themselves will range from environmental improvements to sports camps, crime reducing efforts to children’s holiday clubs, old age help to art and drama classes. Mereseyfest emphasised that the event is not just for youngsters.

The full-scale project next year is expected to involve thousands of people, creating another new wave for Jesus in one of England's major cities - Liverpool.