Dear Friends of Onefest,
It is with mixed emotions that we have decided to call off this year's Onefest.
We are excited in the sense that our mission does not and will not change, and we remain committed to continually working to bring the body of Christ together in the Cedar Valley. We feel God may be moving our team in several directions including future concerts and community events that still focus on oneness. We are sad in the respect that many people, including those that serve on our planning team, have already come to look forward to Onefest over the Christmas holiday, and we will miss seeing you all there.
The reasons for deciding this come from discernment of God's leading, and we have narrowed those down to a set of three.
- The cost of putting on Onefest has risen dramatically, and since one of our main strategies was to make the ticket price low enough that it was accessible to families and youth groups, present implementation costs make that unattainable.
- The timing for Onefest 2007 would fall on December 28th and 29th, 3 days after Christmas, which hinders many family Christmas vacations. This is the same timing as Onefest 2005, but we feel strongly that the 3rd year of the event needs to be a strong momentum builder.
- Several headliner artists that we tried to recruit to be part of Onefest '07 have declined the offer because of vacation timing.
We fully plan to reevaluate and reenergize our efforts to bring back Onefest in 2008. The timing for that year would result in Onefest happening the weekend after the new year. This is a much better date and we plan to implement a renewed strategy of gaining wider community support to keep the costs at a low level.
We want to thank you for your overwhelming support through your emails, volunteer hours, and participation at our events. We ask for your prayers and feedback as we travel this path God has us on.
As One Body we come,
Walt Rogers
Onefest Director |
