The Message is a worldwide movement with a passion to share Jesus Christ with the hardest to reach young people. They do this in a number of ways.
-In Schools
Their seven creative arts mission teams relevantly share the gospel of Jesus through music, dance and theatre, seeing thousands of young people make decisions to live for Christ every year.
-In local communities
With a sharp focus on the most deprived neighbourhoods, they recruit and send long-term Eden teams to live alongside young people, reducing crime and bringing new life and hope to forgotten places.
-In prisons
They help young people find Jesus in prison and assist with housing and jobs through their Message Enterprise Centre, breaking the spiral of youth reoffending and saving the taxpayer millions.
The mark of a life changed by Jesus is the desire to see others changed too. Time and time again, they see youneople going from being the problem to the solution thanks to their work. Many members of their mission teams were once drug abusers, dealers or violent criminals. They celebrate a handful of the best stories of transformation at their annual Urban Hero Awards ceremonies in Manchester and London. They are unashamed about their witness and dependence on Jesus Christ – the surest hope for the transformation of their society.
Well over 100,000 young people come into contact with their staff and volunteer teams each year – in the classroom, at a live gig, in community activities such as the Eden Bus or after-school clubs, or on the wings of young offenders’ institutions.
The Message Trust has its roots in Message ’88, a week-long youth mission that took place at the Manchester Apollo in 1988, pioneered by thei founder and CEO Andy Hawthorne and his brother and business partner Simon. Having employed many young men in their Wythenshawe clothing factory and discovering how little they knew of Jesus, Andy and Simon felt stirred to do something that relevantly presented the good news in language they could understand.
Andy felt his vision confirmed by God when, a few hours after dreaming up the plan for what became Message ’88, and feeling somewhat deflated by the scale of what they were getting into, he opened his Bible:
I read my set Bible reading for the day, Isaiah 43:18–21: ‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honour me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.’
‘I don’t think there are actually any better or more relevant verses anywhere in the Bible that I could have read back then. They remain the touchstone words upon which everything they do is built, and 25 years on you will see them prominently displayed around their headquarters.
Message ’88 was a massive faith venture, involving the most credible bands, theatre companies and special guests available at the time. More importantly, it was a breakthrough moment for the churches of Manchester who got behind the project in a big way, running 300 missions in the build-up to the event and ensuring the Apollo was packed for five full nights. In all, an estimated 20,000 young people heard the gospel message through Message ’88.
A repeat run at Christmas in 1989 attracted similar numbers and led to the brothers being approached by Mark Pennells, a member of one of the bands involved about forming a full-time youth mission to schools. A new charity, ‘Message to Schools’ was the result, formed with the express purpose of taking the gospel to young people in schools through pop and dance music.
It began with a schools week in Cheadle Hulme High School in 1991, where, after a week of lessons, assemblies and lunchtime meetings, the band put on a Friday-night concert in their assembly hall:
Seventy-five kids turned up, all of them looking completely bored. Mark did his music and I did my best to preach as if there were a thousand of them out there. At the end they invited them to join Mark and me in the changing room to receive Christ. You know what? Thirty-nine spiritually hungry young people did just that! And that night a ministry was born.
