GALLERY: 2,500 Christians celebrate God at Love Black Country Together event
Christians from all over the Black Country came together to meet, celebrate and be inspired by the new decade.
More than 80 faith organisations came to the Together 2020 event at the Bethel Convention Centre in West Bromwich on Saturday.
The event was an opportunity for Christians of all denominations to gather together and celebrate the start of the new decade.
Organised by Love Black Country, it was also a chance for those present to find ways to transform the Black Country and make it a more inclusive place for people to live.
Love Black Country is a relational network of Christians and other organisations across the region who work to see the spiritual, social, economic and ecological transformation of the Black Country.
Communications Manager Linsey Wildsmith worked for several months to organise the event and said it was what she was born for.
She said: "This is what I do to see Christians understanding that they are part of a much bigger body than just their little group on a Sunday.
"For me, it's just so encouraging to see this many people are willing to come out and say we're in this together."
More than 2,500 people took part in musical performances, speeches from church leaders and networking and discussion groups through out the evening.
For Linsey, the evening was a good opportunity to inspire people to do more in the community.
She said: "We hope to inspire the Christians who have gathered and show them that they are part of a large movement of people who care about that area and that love God and want to see the area impacted.
"We hope we can celebrate the things that are happening through churches working together because there's lots of good work that's already going on, particularly reaching out to the homeless and the hungry."
Love Black Country operates in the four boroughs of the region and Linsey said she wanted to see more work down with youth and children's workers, running alongside their Next Gen programme.
She said: "After tonight, we would like to see each borough in our area release youth and children's workers to network across churches.
"We already have one Next Gen worker called Deb, who work across all four boroughs, but our dream is to release people who can network and help Christians together in every borough of our area to impact the next generation."
