The Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, SD reports that the annual LifeLight festival, the free Christian music festival held at Wild Water West Waterpark on Labor Day weekend, may have to scale back the event next year due to waning donations. That may mean fewer headliners and shorter hours.
My guess is that this isn’t the only festival affected by the struggling economy. It’s estimated that 58% of Americans gave less to charity in 2008 than they’ve given in the past.
Most Christian music fans know about the big summer festivals like Cornerstone and Creation, but there are actually dozens and dozens and dozens of Christian music festivals that take place all summer across the country. Many of them take place in out of the way regions not on the tour route of major headliners, or in places where the event is the highlight of the summer for Christian music fans. The goal for most of these festivals is not just to entertain, but to provide a non-threatening setting to share the gospel, and many Christians bring non-Christian friends.

And most of these festivals rely not only on ticket sales, but donations from individuals and partnerships with churches. In fact, LifeLight is actually a free event, so there are no ticket sales to help fund the festival, which means that those donations are even more important.
I attend Kingdom Bound every year, and the question on everyone’s mind this year was whether the high gas prices would affect turnout. The festival is unique in that it has a huge Canadian draw, being so close to the border, and gets a lot of commuter attendees from Buffalo and Rochester. No official word, but just eyeballing the crowds it seemed a little lighter this year. (I cover the event every year, and I cut out one day to save gas.)
One of the biggest misconceptions Christians have is that Christian music artists should play for free because they’re a “ministry.” But ministries have expenses. Do you know what it costs your favorite band to tour? Most of them make just enough money on merch sales to get from one show to the next, and sometimes they have to decide between putting gas in the van and eating. The sleep in their cars, they drive through the night, and they eat a lot of fast food. They can’t play for free.
And do you know how much it costs a ministry to bring in a headlining band? We’re talking, in some cases, as much as $10,000. And maybe more. Sure, some of the smaller bands get paid less, but even if a festival has 30 bands, and they pay them each $2,000, that’s $60,000 just for the bands. Add on site rental, lights and sound, staging, advertising, staff costs, security, ticket printing, insurance, tent rental, etc. and you’ve got a huge expense to put on the event. (LifeLight offers a list of myths on their website. You can probably assume at least some of these are true for other festivals.)
If you’ve ever attended a Christian music festival and enjoyed it, consider making a year-end donation to help keep the festival up and running. You can check out the website for the Christian music festival association, which lists many (but not all) of the festivals that happen every year, to see if there’s a festival in your area.