How we came to host a praise event for 8000 children

Premier NexGen: This was clearly a phenomenal event, how did it come about?

Shell Perris: A little background for context, and we go back to my husband Tim and I setting up ‘Imagine Ministry’ in 2018 with a vision to do massive events and provide resources and media for children and families to worship God together, to get to know Jesus more. (Access more about them here.

I’ve been involved in events for 20 years and I’ve seen how events can create those moments of encounter with God that you never forget. We have four children between the ages of twelve and seven, and when they were younger, and we thought, actually, there’s not really that much around for kids and families: that’s where our vision for imagine ministries came from.

We started off by doing three big events at the Worcester Arena over the course of a year, where we saw hundreds of children and families all coming together in a concert style event, where they would worship Jesus together. It was for people who already knew Jesus and people who didn’t know Jesus. I think it was about 150 kids and adults gave their lives to Jesus.

Then COVID hit, and we couldn’t do events anymore.

And so we started to build the media and resources arm of Imagine ministries. And to cut a long story short, we experimented with some different things over COVID. And it led me to ask him this question, “What if we created a kind of Blue Peter style faith based TV programme that children and families can worship, watch together in the home and feel equipped and encouraged to worship Jesus together?”

Fast forward to April 2023 and we were able to film a pilot programme called ‘The Faith Hub’ with God TV. This will be available to 314 million homes around the world and eventually we aim to generate funding to do a whole series.