About Essence
History
Essence Festival has been a vision that has been carried for many years by Mark Cutliffe but also echoed in the hearts of many of others.
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Following many different experiences and prompts from God the decision was made to do something with the concept of the festival and the vision of encouraging creativity and arts amongst God's people. In 2015 we began with an evening for creatives to meet, network, pray and share their creativity together.
The Festival really landed in 2017 and continued to grow until the blip that was the covid years. We restarted in 2022 however and have steadily grown from there.
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What is the festival about?
Communication of a vision is so important and it has taken us sometime to bring all that God has said down to a few points of reference.
These points are the real heart of the festival and any offshoots from the main event.
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The three points are;
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· To call together the artisans and creatives
· To call out the creativity in God’s people
· To encourage and empower people to take creativity back into their homes, churches, communities and the market place.
These points are explained in more detail below.
Call together the creatives
Calling together the creatives is an important part of what Essence Festival is all about. Something special happens when like-minded people gather together. Stories are told, ideas shared and connections made, but that's not all.
When we come together we have the opportunity to encourage and support each other and bringing our gifting together creating a creative, expression filled environment of worship.
Drawing out the creativity amongst Gods people
Calling out the creativity is something of both a prophetic and practical act. Its all about encouraging people to have a go and stretch out creatively expressing something that has inspired, or even just having a go for fun.
So many people have gifting that they don't realise or are paralysed by fear and negative comparison. Essence fest is designed to encourage the seasoned creative as well as those who don't think they have any creativity, skill or gifting.
Empower and Encourage
We intentionally aim to encourage and empower people to both explore and develop in their gifting or even make a start with something creative.
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We also aim to provide learning and opportunities for growth so that people can take something home with them back into their own homes, churches and communities or workplace using creativity to communicate and share something of our amazing creator in new and exciting ways.
And there's a little bit more....
So much happens from a place of community, relationships and networking. We are looking to develop a network of creatives and provide ongoing gatherings, learning opportunities and more, so please take a look at the Gatherings page to find out about meet ups that take place throughout the year!
Even more...
At Essence you will find that many of the people who are speaking or running workshops are actively involved in using their creativity in their communities and to connect and reach out to others. please get in touch if you would like to connect with people in an area of creativity similar to yourself.
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What we believe
The one true God who lives eternally in three persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
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The love, grace and sovereignty of God in creating, sustaining, ruling, redeeming and judging the world.
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The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God – fully trustworthy for faith and conduct.
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The dignity of all people, made male and female in God’s image to love, be holy and care for creation, yet corrupted by sin, which incurs divine wrath and judgement.
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The incarnation of God’s eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ – born of the virgin Mary; truly divine and truly human, yet without sin.
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The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross: dying in our place, paying the price of sin and defeating evil, so reconciling us with God.
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The bodily resurrection of Christ, the first fruits of our resurrection; his ascension to the Father, and his reign and mediation as the only Saviour of the world.
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The justification of sinners solely by the grace of God through faith in Christ.
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The ministry of God the Holy Spirit, who leads us to repentance, unites us with Christ through new birth, empowers our discipleship and enables our witness.
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The church, the body of Christ both local and universal, the priesthood of all believers — given life by the Spirit and endowed with the Spirit’s gifts to worship God and proclaim the gospel, promoting justice and love.
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The personal and visible return of Jesus Christ to fulfil the purposes of God, who will raise all people to judgement, bring eternal life to the redeemed and eternal condemnation to the lost, and establish a new heaven and new earth.