Archive: Youth Festival Offers Electric Guitars and Jesus

By Ruth Snyder

“We took Jesus to our high school. There were three of us who began to pray every morning, ‘God, give us boldness, and give us our high school.’ We began to witness in locker rooms. We saw our friends start coming to Jesus. And the year we graduated over 80 percent of that high school was born again.

“They may not let your pastor in, they may not let your youth pastor in, but they’ll let you in. You have to go. So go—and take Jesus.”

This admonition was delivered in late April by Christian rock musician Russ Taff to a rambunctious crowd of over 13,000 young people, many of them United Methodists. The occasion was Ichthus 1985, a Christian music festival held in Wilmore, Kentucky.

For each of the past 16 years, Ichthus has brought thousands of high school students from as far away as Canada and Colorado to Wilmore, a college town of just 3,800 inhabitants. The young people come for a weekend of upbeat Christian music and youth-centered teaching seminars.

Ichthus is the original model of a now-popular genre-the “Jesus music festival.” The initial Ichthus was held in May, 1970, It was hurriedly organized by Dr. Robert Lyon, professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, along with a group of concerned seminary students. The festival was to be a Christian alternative to Woodstock, a gigantic and unruly rock festival which had shocked Americans in 1969. There were only six weeks of planning for Ichthus ’70. Local talent provided the music. But an encouraging crowd of 1,200 attended.

Today, Asbury Seminary students prepare nearly two years in advance for each of the gigantic annual gatherings, and the music is provided by big-name recording artists. This year the Ichthus crowd listened to famed Christian entertainers Farrell and Farrell, Larry Norman, Jessy Dixon, and Grammy Award-winning Russ Taff, to name a few.

John Criswell, general chairman of Ichthus 1985, explained the selection criteria for lchthus participants. “Performers and speakers for the festival are chosen with three principles in mind. They must be Christian artists, intensely concerned with the issues of youth, and willing to minister to youth with a quality program.”

Contemporary Christian music and its performers have changed drastically since Ichthus began. Punk and new wave dress, squealing guitars, and blaring amplifiers are no longer uncommon at Christian rock festivals like lchthus. Because this commotion can be jarring to post-teenagers, the contemporary Christian music scene has become somewhat controversial.

Russ Taff addressed this issue when he challenged the crowd, “I ask, please don’t judge by your tastes, judge by the fruit. Every year we’re seeing thousands of people come to Jesus through this music.”

Steve Stratton, youth counselor at a Alabama, echoed Russ’ view. “I have a lot of young kids, and they’ve never been exposed to an alternative to secular music. I think it’s going to be a positive experience for them and will lead to a lot of discussion.”

Although the music dominates the Ichthus scene, Carla Ockerman, member of the St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, observed, “the music is 80 percent of it [Ichthus], but the foundation is the [other] 20 percent—the seminars and the counseling.”

This year a host of top-notch speakers addressed the young people concerning sex and dating, rock videos, devotional time, being genuine, and being missions-oriented Christians,

Father Bruce Ritter challenged the crowd to help “feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless.” Father Ritter is founder of Covenant House, a center for runaway and homeless young people headquartered in New York City. He told stories of Billy, a 14-year-old boy who had been living in cars for a year, and of Ernie, a 12-year-old who was found sleeping in a big plastic garbage can on the streets of New York.

The combinations of music, speakers, and seminars make Ichthus weekend largely an evangelistic experience. The Ichthus bylaws state its purpose is to “provide a Christ-centered environment stressing personal conversion and deeper commitment.”

Volunteers from the seminary and Asbury College are trained as counselors and meet on a one-to-one basis with those who respond to the altar calls, which are given periodically throughout the weekend. This year the number who responded exceeded 300. By the end of this year’s gathering, officials noted there were at least 71 new Christians.

Ichthus benefits the youth who attend, and it benefits the youth counselors, according to Diane Kisamore, a youth pastor at Muir’s Chapel UMC in Greensboro, North Carolina. She brought a group of young people to the 1984 festival and returned with another group this year. She commented, “The seminars and the speakers last year really affected our young peoples’ lives. It made them ask many questions about God. They all wanted to come back.

“A big part of Ichthus for my young people was finding out that there are other people like them—or as different as they are—who still love the Lord.”