King Charles III has expressed his support for the “Shine Your Light” campaign that aims to galvanize 100,000 Christians in the U.K. to take part in pop-up carol singing, nativity plays and other creative efforts to help people know Jesus is the King of Kings during the festive period. In a letter sent to the organizers, the King expressed “warmest good wishes” and lauded the efforts to “bring many Christian denominations together, and share in faith this festive period.”
The letter, made public on the Shine Your Light campaign website, added that the King had been “most touched” by the success of the previous campaign in 2023 and sent his “wishes for a Happy Christmas and a peaceful year ahead to all who attend this year.”
75 church leaders publicly backed the campaign with 1,000 events planned nationwide, according to Rachael Heffer, head of mission at the U.K. Evangelical Alliance and Jonathan Oleyede, convener of the National Day of Prayer UK. Preparations to promote the initiative started in October this year (2024) when Christian Daily International noticed filming taking place by the duo for a promotional video asking Christians to get involved in evangelistic activities.
Heffer said that the aim of the campaign has been calling on every local church to take the word onto the streets throughout the Christmas season. She pointed out research by Talking Jesus that showed some 20 percent of the general population in the U.K. do believe that Jesus is the Son of God—and challenged people to take the message out onto the streets that “Jesus is the reason for the season.”
The vision has been to connect the life-transforming good news of the Christmas message with people in their roads, towns, and communities.
When asked about the filming, Heffer told Christian Daily International that “Shine your Light” is a national campaign, involving many mission agencies and church networks, seeking to rally the UK Church to take the good news of the Christmas message out to non believers.
“During Advent 2023, over 78,000 people got involved with the ‘Shine your Light’ campaign resulting in many pop-up carol services on streets around the country, bands, street cafes with Live music and the good news of the Christmas story presented to young and old,” she said.
“Hundreds gathered in Trafalgar Square for an amazing medley of music, worship, and speaking of the revelation of Christmas.”
The rallying of a hopeful 100,000 Christians for the campaign aims to utilize “creative, simple, but effective ways to make Jesus known to those around them,” according to Heffer.
“The dream is to encourage thousands of local Christians and church leaders to take the message of good news out onto their streets in any way that suits their community. It can be very simple and pop-up… [is] often the best way.”
